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Letters of An Unsuccessful Actor 



LETTERS OF AN 


UNSUCCESSFUL 

ACTOR 


BOSTON 

SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 


PN zsW 

.Z<? L* 


/o<et e. I 

n tt- V3 


Printed in Great Britain 


FOREWORD 


The letters printed in the following pages will, I believe, 
explain themselves. Whether their appeal is sufficiently 
vital to form a public time alone can prove, but I have often 
felt that there was matter in them that might be of general 
interest. I asked the consent of my Correspondent to 
publish them, and his reply, of which I quote a part, is 
characteristic of his whole attitude during our correspond¬ 
ence ; he says :— 

“ By all means, publish if it will amuse you—and you can 
find a publisher sufficiently adventurous. But don’t for¬ 
get that I wrote for your eyes alone and that our talks on 
paper have had the advantage for our mutual understanding 
of a very real sympathy which a stranger must lack. I could 
never seek publication ; firstly, because I have no literary 
graces, and secondly, because I know myself more truthful 
than discreet. I trust you, then, to edit, to compress and 
to eliminate however and whenever may seem good to you, 
but please don’t print my name ! It would have no weight 
anyhow, for very few people know me—even among those 
who possibly may think they do—and the interest, if interest 
there be, is in the matter and by no means in the writer. 
If I may suggest—and if that amiable publisher is ever 
found—I recommend that you should call the volume 
Letters of an Unsuccessful Actor and risk the obvious critical 
comment— and , for Heaven’s sake, don’t print the title in 
inverted commas.” 


Following my friend’s suggestion I have made a selection 
and edited—perhaps a little less than he would have wished. 
I have compressed sometimes and I have eliminated only 
where the matter seemed too personal for general interest or 
where violence of expression might jar the casual reader who 
failed to detect the humorous intention which I knew un¬ 
derlay his words. For the rest I leave him to speak for 
himself hoping that others may find as I have amusement 
in his sometimes curious angle of observation and 
somewhat bizarre attitude towards various Arts and 
conventions and particularly towards the modern Theatre. 


York. 

April , 1923. 


R. M. S. 




TABLE OF CONTENTS, 


PAGE 


Letter 

I. Nothing in Particular 



1 

Letter 

II. The Early Nineties 



5 

Letter 

III. John Philip Kemble and Sarah Siddons 


12 

Letter 

IV. Wilson Barrett 



18 

Letter 

V. The Eighties 



22 

Letter 

VI. David Garrick 



28 

Letter 

VII. A Touring Company 



36 

Letter 

VIII. Parti Carrt 



42 

Letter 

IX. Melodrama 



47 

Letter 

X. Romantique et Romanesque 



51 

Letter 

XI. The Conductor 



57 

Letter 

XII. In Defence of Tinkering 



61 

Letter 

XIII. Old Comedy 



66 

Letter 

XIV. Results of Tinkering 



73 

Letter 

XV. Spurious Old Comedy 



77 

Letter 

XVI. The Food Controller 



83 

Letter 

XVII. Justice for Germany 



88 

Letter 

XVIII. Affaire du Cceur 



94 

Letter 

XIX. Kindness and Napoleon 



100 

Letter 

XX. Equestrian Drama and the Aquarium 


105 

Letter 

XXI. A Shakespeare Calendar 



111 

Letter 

XXII. Alexandre Dumas 



114 

Letter 

XXIII. Commonplace Things 



120 

Letter 

XXIV. Richard Burbage 



125 

Letter 

XXV. Shakespeare 



131 

Letter 

XXVI. The Law of Compensation 



140 

Letter 

XXVII. Mercutio and Puck 

, t 


144 


vii. 













TABLE OF CONTENTS—continued, 


Letter 

XXVIII. Actors’ Union . 

.. 

PAGE 

150 

Letter 

XXIX. The Conscious Martyr and Iachimo 

•• 

156 

Letter 

XXX. The Cri., The Pav. and The Troc. 

•• 

161 

Letter 

XXXI. Decadence and Scissors-and-paste 

• • 

169 

Letter 

XXXII. Altruism and Mr. Smillie 

•• 

174 

Letter 

XXXIII. Cyrano and Some Others 

•• 

181 

Letter 

XXXIV. The Type of the Epoch .. 

•• 

188 

Letter 

XXXV. Edmund Kean . 

•• 

194 

Letter 

XXXVI. Betterton and Macklin 

• • 

203 

Letter 

XXXVII. W. C. Macready . 

• • 

210 

Letter XXXVIII. Verse and Prose 


216 

Letter 

XXXIX. A Visit to Hastings 

• • 

221 

Letter 

XL. Dilettante versus Artist 

• • 

226 

Letter 

XLI. The Railway Strike 

.. 

231 

Letter 

XLII. At the Tea Table 

• • 

239 

Letter 

XLIII. H. B. and Laurence Irving 

•. 

247 

Letter 

XLIV. Kean and the Cox Case 

.. 

254 

Letter 

XLV. The Grand Manner 

.. 

260 

Letter 

XLVI. Charles Kean and Phelps 

.. 

265 

Letter 

XLVII. Boucicault’s Plays 

.. 

273 

Letter 

XLVIII. Jackdom . 

.. 

279 

Letter 

XLIX. Male Impersonation 

.. 

285 

Letter 

L. Irving’s Hamlet 

.. 

291 

Letter 

LI. Irving as Comedian 

.. 

299 

Letter 

LII. Actor-proof 

.. 

307 

Letter 

LIII. Falling off a Log 

.. 

313 

Letter 

LIV. Louis XI. and Richelieu 

.. 

318 

Letter 

LV. Charles I. and Becket 

.. 

326 

Letter 

LVI. Great Acting 

., 

332 


viii, 









LETTER I 


London 

2nd June , 1918. 

My dear Redgie-Yes, I insist upon spelling you as you 

are pronounced. Not that you are pronounced, for a less 
didactic person I never encountered ; didactic, be it well 
understood, in the aggressive sense. I know you have 
opinions and the strength of purpose to respect your own 
judgment when you have formed it on good evidence, as 
every one should. Wobbly opinions in regard to the great 
facts of life are the first cause of loose action, indeterminate 
thought and inevitable failure. So you shall not be 
vitelline Reggie, but Redgie of the keen edge. 

My curiosity was at the fever point before our first meet¬ 
ing and was tempered in no sense by our host’s report on 
you at the breakfast table. “ Redgie’s a sport! ” he said. 
From him this did not suggest what the banal phrase usually 
implies. It meant, probably, no more than that you had 
advised illuminatingly as to the rearrangement of the 
pictures in his study. After our month’s acquaintance I 
know that he could have had no better adviser. 

I write simply because I want to continue our conversa¬ 
tions. We managed to discuss so many subjects without 
disagreeing—thanks to your admirable tact—that I feel 
it more profitable to discuss Nothing in Particular with you 
than most things with anyone else. 

Of course if this should become a long letter I shall arrive 
at Shakespeare, even though I start with Lloyd George, 
Christian Science or Chu-Chin-Chow ; but to-day I feel 
like tackling neither. I write because I want to hear 
from you. You are sure to say something that will pro¬ 
voke me to tirade; and in imagination I shall see that 


l 



LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


patient and critical smile which invariably accompanies 
the corrective logic of your comment. If you mention 
Saucliiehall Street I shall think of Cranston’s horrible tea- 
shop or that furniture-dealer’s window that, as I told you, 
reminded me of Irving’s productions at the Lyceum ; the 
perfection of taste expressed with the maximum of richness 
and the minimum of obtrusiveness ; the only setting for 
Shakes-What did I tell you ? 

You are back at home now, with your Mother and Sister, 
and I imagine the welcome you have received. No such 
vulgarity as “ the fatted calf,” I am sure. I remember 
that you don’t like veal—nor coffee! There you miss 
one of the chief joys of life. But from what you have told 
me of the exploits of the admirable Mason, I am satisfied 
that a suitable repast celebrated the event. You used to 
jeer at me in Glasgow on account of my gastronomical 
idiosyncrasies. I admit I am a faddist; very lean years, 
and many of them, never reconciled me to gross food. Even 
the days when as a super I starved on nine shillings a week 
in the cause of Art did not vitiate the sensitiveness of my 
palate; and I remember distinctly a day many years 
later when a friend (who is now a Star in America) 
generously gave me, at Roche’s little restaurant in Old 
Compton Street, the first dinner I had had for ten days, 
I could not resist criticising adversely the Tripe and Onions 
which formed the piece de resistance. But you detest the 
subject of food and the above will merely evoke some con¬ 
temptuous gibe—even if you condescend to notice it. 

I hope your Mother will not think your visit to the City 
of Dreadful Knights has done you harm. Your presence 
in the house party was inestimable. It is a peculiarly 
difficult thing for a professional actor to produce a Company 


2 


LETTER NUMBER ONE 


of amateurs—unless he has the Social Manner, to which I 
do not pretend. I treated them exactly as I should have 
treated professionals. It is true that none of our amateurs 
had technique, whereas in a professional Company one may 
find two or three who have some slight knowledge of it. 
Oh, yes, I can see your quizzical smile and hear you calling 
me a soured and disappointed Old Pro. who can lind no good 
on the modern stage. I have sometimes felt that is true. 
Then I do a round of the theatres and it generally happens 
that I find something at last to give me new hope and faith 
in the Drama’s future. But the average to-day is deplorably 
low. One wonders if it was ever lower ; and out of my 
own recollection I can answer Yes ; for I believe it touched 
bottom at the time of the Ibsen craze in the early Nineties. 
Pinero produced The Second Mrs . Tanqueray in 1893, and 
who will say that Ibsen’s influence had nothing to do with 
that ? I don’t mean the theme, but the method. Later, 

I remember—I think it was during the run of The Notorious 
Mrs. Ebbsmith at the Garrick—I was at a big dinner at the 
Cecil with John Hare in the Chair, and in his speech he said : 
“ Better a wine-glass of Pinero than a tumblerful of Ibsen.” 
I remarked to my neighbour : “ Pour a wine-glass of Ibsen 
into a tumbler and fill up with water and you have Pinero.” 
This was possibly unjust and certainly unkind—the more 
so because it contained the elements of truth. 

But in those days the few who appreciated Ibsen were a 
fighting minority, and, believe me, we had much to fight. 
I have noted some amusing volte-faces on the subject on 
the part of certain gentlemen of the Press in the past quarter 
of a century. 

But in the early Nineties Pinero’s really fine play was 
epoch-making ; it was the start of a new era; the era of 



3 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


the Playwright, who from that time ousted the Actor from 
the place of first importance in the Theatre. Thencefor¬ 
ward Acting, as I understand it, has steadily deteriorated. 

Acting is properly the Art of Impersonation but Pinero 
would have none of that. He chose his cast for their per¬ 
sonal idiosyncrasies; he banished make-up and all 
that it implies. The bald-pated uncle of fifty-five must be 
played by the bald-pated actor of fifty-five; the paunch 
must be the actor’s own ; the pimply youth must appear 
upon the stage with the pimples inflicted upon him by nature. 

Modern dramatists and producers have adopted Pinero’s 
method and cast plays on the same lines thereby creating a 
tremendous influx to the profession, for Types have been 
sought far and wide, who, often after two or three 
engagements only have gone to swell the growing ranks of 
the unemployable. And so the past twenty-five years have 
seen the growth of a new art; the Art of Self-exploitation, 
which may be very fine—very delicate—very interesting, 
but is not Acting. 

I am reminded of Hazlitt’s dictum in regard to a perform¬ 
ance of Kemble’s, I forget which, but from what I can learn 
of Kemble I suspect it would apply equally to any or all 
of them. Hazlitt wrote : “ In this character he did nothing 
but appear in it.”* ** The same might be said to-day of most 
of our leading actors and with equal truth. 

Please write as soon as you can spare the time. I have 
nothing to do but look for work, always a dreary and dis¬ 
appointing exercise, and your letter is sure to stimulate. 

Yours, 

* From HAZLITT on the ENGLISH STAGE. 

** Cato was another of those parts for which Mr. Kemble was peculiarly 
fitted by his physical advantages. There was nothing for him to do in 
this character, but to appear in it.”— Ed. 



LETTER II 


London 

7th June , 1918. 

Like you, you see, I begin to write very small and care¬ 
fully because of the paper shortage, though I expect I shall 
finish sprawling all over the page. 

Yes, I have made friends through the post, but in only 
one case has the friendship survived the shock of personal 
encounter. If I succeed in making another where the 
rencontre may have failed I will say only that it is one I 
am proud to have on any conditions. 

You are not too get-at-able, are you, Redgie ? One is 
never sure how much you have seen, heard and noted ; 

but your intuition-My hat! You have got any woman 

I have ever met beaten in the first lap. Write, my friend ; 
tell us what you know of things and people, and if you 
don’t tell us something new and tell it differently——Well, 
I’ll eat that hat! 

You remind me of Chatterton—I mean the picture poor 
old Wilson Barrett tried to realise—the starved boy on the 
truckle-bed*. But, thank Heaven, you are in no danger of 
starving and there are many downy cushions on your sofa 
or I have a totally wrong impression of your Mother and 
Sister Marie. I look forward to seeing her play. I suppose 
you think you know her ? Well, I shall know her as 
you do when I have seen her on the stage. I don’t think 
I have ever yet made a mistake about the true personality 
of anyone I first saw acting and afterwards met in the flesh. 
The process reversed leads sometimes to sad misjudgment. 

That’s true what you say of friends—and it is their fault 
(and misfortune) if we don’t want to see or write to them for 


* Death of Chatterton by Henry Wallis in the Tate Gallery.—E d. 





LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


long stretches. How dare they cease to be interesting ? 
And how dare we not do all we know to make them be 
interesting instead of just letting them become a habit ? 
How can they be interesting if we just take them for granted ? 
And how boring they find us when we do ! So perhaps, 
after all, we share the fault.. Twice I’ve been very near 
death, and behold ! some of the stodgiest people I knew 
suddenly became interesting. Why ? Because my con¬ 
dition had aroused their interest; they expanded and I 
found I had friends where before I had merely acquaint¬ 
ances. We don’t give people a chance. 

This morning a woman offered me her seat in the Tube. 
Do I look as feeble as that, Redgie ? I’m ever so much 
better now—fitter than I have been for years since that last 
operation. But have I got that damned Germany in my 
veins ? The gall that rises in me at thought of her is bitter 
enough to poison my blood. She’s deadly mad because 
she lacks the two essential qualities of sanity ; Reverence 
and Sense of Humour. But we shall never chain her up. 
She recognises nothing but Force, never has and never 
will, and that we should never use—except to drive her 
back over her frontiers so that she might gather new strength 
to overrun us again. But England always stretches out 
helping hands to a fallen foe, heedless of what wicked use 
that foe may make of her clemency. Dear Fool! I love 
her. 

But can I be of any use to her ? I don’t see how. The 
last lot called up, nearly ten years my juniors, are dying 
like flies, I hear, of pneumonia in the training camps. 
Even if they’ld have me it would be a senseless and wicked 
thing to sell up Chris’ home to go and wash thousands of 
dishes or peel tons of potatoes in a camp while she starved 


6 


LETTER NUMBER TWO 


on my sevenpence a day. Possibly at that job one might 
get an odd scrap of shrapnel but I know they’ld never let 
me stop a bullet fair and square. I would go, if only to 
spare a better man, were it not so. But no, it would be 
something comic—and poor Chris would take it quite 
seriously. 

Do you know Chris and I can spend a whole day together 
without uttering one single word and yet without mis¬ 
understanding and be perfectly happy ? Isn’t that proof 
of friendship ? 

You ask me to tell you more of the London Stage in the 
Nineties when Pinero bombed it with The Second Mrs. 
Tanqueray —and you say I am unjust to Kemble. 

As for Kemble, I was always sure his feet were of clay and 
the London Stage of that day—the Nineties—was in worse 
case than in his ; for in 1814 a genius did arise to save the 
Theatre, whereas to-day, even, she waits in vain as she has 
done for forty-four years ; and in the Nineties she was at 
her lowest ebb. Irving was declining ; his great triumphs 
of acting were in the past. His production of Henry the 
Eighth was, I believe, his greatest financial success after 
Faust ; but the play is more a pageant than a drama and 
though his Wolsey was fine the part affords no very great 
acting opportunity. It was probably one of Kemble’s best 
efforts. Irving’s Lear was for me a disappointment, as it 
was for him, though in a different sense. He considered 
it one of his biggest achievements and was bitterly grieved 
that it was not recognised as such. It certainly had two 
great moments ; his first appearance and the recognition of 
Cordelia at the end. Then came Bechet , a huge triumph 
for his personality and a very beautiful performance, how 
beautiful I will one day strive to tell you, but for him calling 


7 


B 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


for no very great effort of impersonation. In those years 
he was devoting himself to that work that was to be the 
crown and glory of his life—though all his life had been 
directed to the same purpose—to raise the social status of 
the Actor; to remove the old “ rogue and vagabond ” 
stigma from his calling ; to promote it so that its members 
might take rank with those of the liberal professions. In 
1895 he achieved his end, for his Knighthood was an honour 
to all who professed the Art and was accepted by him as 
such. I was on the stage of the Lyceum, within a few feet of 
him that wonderful day when the profession congratulated 
him and presented the gold casket and Address which w T e 
had all signed. I have never met a personality so dignified 
—so impressive, whose mere presence so nobly electrified 
the atmosphere. That such a heartfelt greeting as we 
gave him should have commemorated an event of such 
disastrous consequence to the Art he loved is to my mind 
as deplorable as it is positive. 

But I am going too far ahead ; I was talking of acting 
in pr e-Tanqueray days. Irving’s work was practically 
done and there was no sign of a successor. The Kendals 
had left the St. James’ and were, I think, touring in America 
with past successes; while Alexander continued most 
politely in the traditions of that house. He produced Lady 
Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde. It was perhaps the 
most interesting of the new plays, but it was all Author, 
except for one scene of Actress by Marion Terry, and very 
beautiful she made it. 

John Hare at the Garrick revived Diplomacy and indeed 
Revival was the order of the day—or adaptation from the 
French, Diplomacy (Sardou’s Dora) was both. 

The dramas at Drury Lane, the Adelphi and the Princess’s 


8 


LETTER NUMBER TWO 


had sadly deteriorated from the virility of ten years earlier. 
The Whip was not to be compared with Youth or Human 
Nature at the first, I mean in point of interest as stories 
and in affording acting opportunities. Kyrle Bellew was 
playing The Lights of Home at the Adelphi; but he had not 
the brio of Terriss or Warner and his vehicle had not the 
simplicity and direct appeal of Henry Pettitt’s plays. 

A Royal Divorce , produced, I think, at the Olympic and 
moved to the Princess’s, has lived for twenty-seven years 
on its sex interest, the panache of Napoleon and the mar¬ 
vellous showmanship of W. W. Kelly. It is the legitimate 
successor to East Lynne , The Lady of Lyons and The Stranger. 

Wyndham was also content with revivals at the Criterion : 
Brighton , Fourteen Days , Betsy and Pink Dominoes. He 
produced The Fringe of Society , adapted from Dumas 
fils' Le Demi Monde, bowdlerised and spoilt. 

Hawtrey at the Comedy revived the best of all his farces, 
The Arabian Nights and produced The Sportsman (also 
from the French) in which he, Lottie Venne and Charles 
Groves were all at their best. 

Edward Terry revived Pinero’s best farce The Magistrate , 
but the performance was not a patch on the original at the 
Court with Arthur Cecil, John Clayton and Mrs. John Wood. 

There was a clever comedy at the Court by Brandon 
Thomas called Marriage with William Mackintosh at his 
very excellent best. I saw all of these, but the plays worth 
remembering were few because acting chances were practi¬ 
cally nil and in the revivals performances generally compared 
unfavourably with the originals. 

Our Boys was revived at the Vaudeville. David James, 
one of the best actors I have ever seen, was a joy. William 
Farren III played his original part, but Sir Geoffrey at best 


9 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


is only a feeder, though Farren made one forget that. I 
have played him, after a fashion—and a long way after 
Farren—so I know. 

Even at the Gaiety Cinder-Ellen-Up-Too-Late was dull 
by comparison with past productions. Gaiety Burlesque 
was soon to be no more. Oh, for the days when Nellie 
Farren, Kate Vaughan, Edward Terry, and Edward 
Royce, with Dallas and Squire, Connie Gilchrist and William 
Elton made things hum ! And even later when one of the 
greatest geniuses our stage has ever known, Fred Leslie, 
held the boards, but those days too—alas !—were past. 

Coquelin came to the Opera Comique with Thermidor. 
We had the exquisite L’Enfant Prodigue at the Prince of 
Wales’ and later Le Statue du Commandeur with Tarride. 
Real lessons in acting, these. But I want to tell you about 
our Stage at that time, and, as you see, I can find nothing 
of interest to tell; a mere catalogue of revivals, and new 
plays so undistinguished that memory won’t recall them. 

Yes, one play I do remember—with acting in it, The 
Silent Battle , in which Olga Nethersole reached her top notch. 
I had been present when she made her first big hit; the 
first performance of The Union Jack at the Adelphi, a play 
by no means up to the standard of the great successes there, 
but it served her well. She climbed higher and indeed 
became very important as a manager, here and in America, 
but she never acted so well as in The Silent Battle , and though 

I saw her as Carmen and as Sap ho-Well, I prefer not 

to express my opinion. 

Tree produced Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People and as 
Doctor Stockman gave a great performance. Later he 
revived the play at His Majesty’s and clowned the part. 

But on the whole the Theatre of the early Nineties was 


10 



LETTER NUMBER TWO 


dull as ditch water. No wonder the public were bored 
with it and preferred the rattle and humanity of the Music 
Halls. The reason was simply that the profession was 
growing snobbish ; the old Stock Companies had died out 
and the members of touring Companies were made to copy 
slavishly the originals of the parts, as created in London so 
that all opportunity of developing individuality was sacri¬ 
ficed. Where was inspired acting to come from ? Drama¬ 
tists may lecture and theorise to their hearts’ content; 
they may write Conversations, state problems (which they 
usually forget to unravel) and disseminate propaganda, 
but if they don’t make acting opportunity a primary con¬ 
sideration the Art of Acting will die out and without Acting 
there will be no Theatre. 

I must talk about Kemble another time and give you my 
opinions of him and his precious sister. 

Heresy, eh ? 

“ What about Sarah Siddons as the Tragic Muse ? ” 
you ask, “ was she not indeed the personification of Dignity 
of Grandeur?” 

To w hich I answer : “ Possibly ; but could she ACT ? ” 

Nous discutons. 


ll 


LETTER III 


London 

12 th June , 1918. 

Because Shakespeare had no use for Ambition, as he 
understood the word, we must not assume that he would 
disapprove the healthful striving, the self-sacrificing en¬ 
deavour of the true artist. I imagine he thought of Am¬ 
bition only as an attribute of the tyrant. Your Sister’s 
ambition must be realised ; it is wholly justifiable and 
praiseworthy and it will succeed. 

It is years now since any such desire left me—circumstances 
crushed it out. Sometimes it puts up a feeble flicker 
but sober reflection extinguishes it. Still I have found 
compensation. 

My Chris is just as full of it as I was at the beginning. I 
don’t know yet what she can do, but should she prove 
worth while I long to do for her what I failed to do for 
myself. 

Times are difficult and the ideal training for an actor it 
is no longer possible to obtain—I mean a sound basis of 
two years in a Shakespearean Repertory with a Star who 
knows the traditions, starting absolutely at the beginning 
with Messengers, Second Officers, Fourth Lords, and the 
Priest in Hamlet as an opportunity worth striving for. By 
the end of that time the music of the verse will have grown 
into the youngster’s being, the words will come on necessity 
without effort and all the business of the Star parts 
will have been weighed, considered and stored for future 
use. The third year should be devoted to modern Farce. 
I assume that Dancing and Fencing have been practised 
in those two years ; but a round of parts in good farces is 
invaluable for teaching a light and sure touch, incisiveness. 


12 


LETTER NUMBER THREE 


resilience and rapidity. Any tendency towards ponderosity 
wrongly acquired in the Shakespeare will disappear. I am 
thinking of the farce acting of thirty years ago when Glover 
used to produce such farces as Hawtrey then excelled in. 
At the end of those three years the novice should be qualified 
to start acting in earnest—ready to strike out a Line with the 
rudiments of a sound technique to build on. 

I had no such luck, though, the Lord knows ! I got 
variety enough. I worked in Fit-ups that proved to be 
mostly Dry-ups ; our repertory consisting of The Bells 
and The Private Secretary (both plays we had no right to, 
being copyright, and I’ll swear our Manager, who 
couldn’t pay our salaries, never paid an Author’s fee), 
Aurora Floyd, The Unknown, The Corsican Brothers, The 
Snowball, Lady Audley's Secret, The Mystery of a Hansom 
Cab, The Octoroon, The Shaughraun, Two Roses and— 
inevitably— East Lynne. There were many others I forget, 
and innumerable farces, we played a different one each 
night. It broke the ice for me. I played Utility at first, 
naturally, and later Walking Gentlemen—sometimes a 
good Juvenile and then at Christmas Witch in Panto¬ 
mime and Harlequin. I’ve managed somehow to play 
most things, even Pierrot, but never Clown or—I was going 
to say Policeman, but as I’ve been on for Constable Bullock 
as well as every other male part in East Lynne I can claim 
even that, for no Policeman in a Harlequinade was ever 
more outrageously extravagant than Bullock—in our 
version — and Pitt Hardacre certainly had no fees ! 

But I was talking about Chris. The Gods alone know 
whether she will ever act. If it’s in her I don’t know how 
to get it out I have no faith in the modern Repertory 
Theatres, so-called, They are really Stock Companies not 


13 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


Repertories. The plays are all gloom and bad Ibsen— 
I mean attempts to characterise on his lines but without 
action to develop the character. And what is a play 
without action ? Just anything you like to call it, but not 
a Play. And the Schools and Academies of Acting ? If 
they would teach novices to enter and leave a room—what 
trouble most actors have always with a door !—to say : 
“ Good morning, have you used Pears’ soap ? ” first 
merely as an interjection and later to fill the business of 
entering, closing the door, bowing to hostess, shaking 
hands with host, accepting invitation to sit, moving 
a chair from window to fireplace and dropping into it 
there, gracefully at ease, they would achieve some¬ 
thing ; but mainly, as I understand and have observed 
with the Finished, they make the students rehearse a part 
straight away or put them to reciting pages of Shakespeare 
without an audience , whose place no Teacher or Committee 
can supply. For remember, an audience is a composite 
intelligence that makes itself felt as a single entity and it 
more than half acts the play; without it the Actor cannot 
compose his part. Experience teaches him much but never 
all; at rehearsals he tries effects—at least some actors do— 
but he can never crystallise his final intention until the 
. audience plays its part. 

Now where was I ? Of course, Chris. Well, Chris 
went to no School, except for Dancing and Fencing, and that 
she hasn’t thanked me for yet because she hasn’t learned 
the use of them ; I refer, of course, to ballet dancing, which 
she cordially detests. 

When she returns to town will you bring your Marie to 

meet her-say, at the Academy or some such stodgy 

place? If she should prove eventually to have Art worthy 


14 


LETTER NUMBER THREE 


of association with your Sister’s-Well, it might be amusing 

for them both. 

No, I didn’t see Chatterton , but I saw Barrett often, and 
he could never look the starved youth of that picture* ; 
he was too stocky (typically Yorkshire) but excellent in some 
parts and great in one. I remember the production of 
Chatterton but I didn’t get to it, perhaps I was working at 
the time. 

Now shall we talk of John Philip Kemble and his sister 
who married Henry Siddons ? This gentleman, by the way, 
throughout his wife’s career appears to have remained dis¬ 
creetly in the background. 

Kemble and his sister Sarah moved the public by their 
wonderful voices; impressed by their superb physique 
and the classic dignity of their carriage ; and I admit that 
these natural graces and the accomplishment implied may 
well have commanded respect in days when the average 
mummer commanded little—and even admiration. But 
could they act ? Kemble as Coriolanus—remember it was 
a doctored version he played, not Shakespeare—and as 
Cato in Addison’s play, must have looked the noble Roman 
to the life ; his presence filled the stage ; he was London’s 
idol. But when it came to acting, Kean, with his new and 
natural method, overthrew him in one night. 

Kemble was a reciter. Trained at a Jesuit seminary 
he was half a priest; his Wolsey may have been perfect, 
but I am glad to have been spared his Hamlet. 

Mrs. Siddons probably had more histrionic ability than 
her famous brother—all the family were actors—but I 
cannot discover that she ever really characterised. Some 
of her readings, as, for example, striving for pathos when, 

*Death of Chatterton by Henry Wallis in the Tate Gallery— Ed. 


15 



LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


as Lady Macbeth, she said : “ Had he not resembled my 
father as he slept, I had done ’t ” would seem to suggest 
that she thought only of the effect of the moment rather 
than of the composition of the character. 

But she was tragic by temperament, “ beautiful but 
adamantine.” 

What can her Beatrice have been like ? As sprightly 
as a tank, I should think. Queen Katherine was no doubt 
magnificent. Magnificent is the word, too, for her Margaret 
of Anjou in The Earl of Warwick. Her great success— 
on her second debut at Drury Lane (the first was a failure) 
was as Isabella in one of Garrick’s re-hashes, The Fatal 
Wedding. She was famous also as Calista in Rowe’s The 
Fair Penitent and as Belvidera (Venice Preserved) ; but 
these parts are all on one note and she declaimed them with 
the same rhetorical flourish that coloured her speech even 
in the sanctity (I have chosen that word) of the domestic 
temple. Can’t you hear her at the breakfast-table ? 
“ I shall be obleeged, Mr. Siddons, if you will favour me 
with a boiled egg and the middle portion of that gammon 
rasher.” Picture the alacrity of poor Henry Siddons 
who at night played Utility to his spouse’s Tragic Lead ! 

At her zenith she was, no doubt, a magnificent creature, 
and from what I can gather she played one part to positive 
perfection ; that part was Sarah Siddons. 

But, you may say, there must have been more than 
mere physical beauty to justify the rhapsodies of so 
many admiring critics who have chronicled her excel¬ 
lencies, though without exactly telling us how she 
excelled. Can it be that she possessed something of that 
quality with which Duse has captured the imagination 
of our times ? Without troubling to impersonate she yet 


16 


LETTER NUMBER THREE 


demonstrates—I can find no better word—a character. 
She does not act it—makes no attempt to be it—yet contrives 
to explain and illustrate it. You can’t believe in Duse as 
Marguerite Gauthier, in fact you know that Marguerite 
Gauthier could not have been a bit like that; yet you know 
that were Duse in Marguerite Gauthier’s circumstances 
it is exactly so that she would think and speak. This is the 
art of the reciter ; at its highest a great art, but emphati¬ 
cally not the Art of Acting. 

Did you ever hear of Samuel Brandram ? He was a 
great reciter, second only, I was told, to J. C. M. Bellew, 
Kyrle Bellew’s father, whom I never saw. Brandram 
could recite anything and make you see it; he would mimic 
and suggest Falstaff or Sir Andrew, Micawber or Uriah 
Heep, Smike or Fagin with equal cleverness. It is quite 
likely that he could have personated neither. If a beautiful 
woman had such a gift, with the added effects of costume 
and the glamour of the theatre to help her and chose always 
parts to which her physique was suited, she might well be 
acclaimed as great, when, in fact, she could not act at all. 

This is merely a theory, and though it may explain Mrs. 
Siddons, it won’t do for John Philip, for I’m sure he had 
nothing of Brandram’s ability. 

Now do write and abuse 

Yours heretically, 


17 


LETTER IV 


London 

18 th June , 1918. 

Ever since I had your letter I have been impatient to 
answer it, but I’ve been kept whirling about—to little pur¬ 
pose, I fear—by affairs of more importunity than importance. 

What do I do ? Run round in a circle wasting time and 
energy seeking opportunity instead of making it, 
though I know quite well its elements are floating in the 
air around me inviting me to grasp and mould them. 

I am at present trying to persuade a would-be dramatist 
to convert a three-act farce, in which there is a really 
brilliant notion, into a four-act play of serious interest. 
You would not think this possible or worth while. It is, 
anyhow, an impossible farce. I have offered an idea which 
my author inclines to accept. It was one that came to 
me when I was in hospital just before we met—not three 

months ago, though it seems-Well, sometimes yesterday 

and sometimes years. It came to me in a sort of half 
conscious dream under the influence of the morphia and it 
blends most happily with the root notion of what ought not 
to be farce. I roughed out a scenario some time back, 
the author is working on it and in about a month I am to 
see him at his place in Bexhill and consider the result of his 
efforts. 

One play I tinkered in this fashion ran for over seven 
months in two West End theatres. So you see, if it comes 
off, it is worth while. It is also true that two other plays, 
similarly treated, have run less than two months between 
them. And how many have never been produced ! 

No, I don’t want “ stodginess,” but it seemed proper to 


18 



LETTER NUMBER FOUR 


suggest it for the meeting of two girls. I mean that in 
London most public meeting places are either cheap and 
vulgar, or expensive—and vulgar. After all, the Palm 
Court at Regent Palace is more amusing than the Ritz— 
to which Chris and I do not aspire. I’m with you about 
“ Heaven above and the road beneath ” in the right com¬ 
pany, but even the right company could not convert 
Kensington Gardens—much less Piccadilly—to suitable 
“ road beneath ” for our purpose. The meeting I project 
must be within walls. 

How wise and understanding you are about this army 
business, and how good of you to know I am not a coward. 
I wish I did. As you say: there is never an alternative 
when the “ right thing ” stares one in the face. But you 
are mistaken in saying we have fifty selves. You are par¬ 
ticularly many-sided, but in each of us there is a true Self, 
reconcilable to all the varying moods, a chord, so to speak, 
that harmonises all the tones. One has to find that. 
Self-analysis is always difficult; the “ still small voice ” 
will not be stifled and when one listens with one’s whole 
being and obeys—then is Peace, Peace that can never be 
achieved by shirking or evasion or deception—that comes 
only from inside. 

Am I prosing again ? Please forgive. 

In that play Cheating Cheaters I thought Kyrle Bellew’s 
was easily the best performance. The personality does 
not appeal to either of us but we must recognise the clever¬ 
ness. You would hate her in The Knife but it wouldn’t 
be just for the performance is brilliant though the play re¬ 
volted me beyond expression ; it is unwholesome, a catch¬ 
penny show in the worst possible taste. 

I’m afraid prejudice in regard to personalities (pro as 


19 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


well as con) ruins much criticism : that and fear of the libel 
laws— and consideration for the advertising columns. 

Yes, I could tell you a great deal more of Wilson Barrett. 

I remember him at his zenith : in the days of The Silver 
King and Claudian. They will tell you that E. H. Brooke 
was better as Wilfred Denver, but don’t believe it. Barrett 
was unapproachable, certainly in the first Act. Then came 
Claudian , ■which was a huge personal triumph ; London 
flocked ; women mobbed him and the house “ rose ” at 
him nightly. There was the story of how he clutched the 
tableaux curtains as they fell and turning to the Company 
shouted hysterically : “ Where’s Irving now ? ” It may not 
be true in fact but it is in spirit for his vanity was his down¬ 
fall. But how splendid was his revival, and how large 
and generous-hearted he proved himself. It was in his 
dressing-room I met Marie Corelli. Of her, perhaps, more 
anon. 

What was Barrett’s great part ? Why, Pete in The 
Manxman , superlatively. I saw Matheson Lang play it 
not long ago and I admit that I have rarely seen a 
more perfect exhibition of technique. Very shortly 
afterwards I saw Derwent Hall Caine attempt it. He 
had little in his favour ; but in one or two scenes the part 
carried him away and he made effects by sheer sincerity 
that Lang never achieved. But Barrett! I think it was 
the most profoundly touching performance—certainly in 
domestic drama—that I have ever seen. It reminded me 
of what I had heard of Charles Dillon in Belphegor. One 
sat with a lump in one’s throat, almost choked and yet smil¬ 
ing ; proud to feel that humanity could be so unaffectedly 
noble, thankful that the truth of the picture was appealing 
to every soul in the audience, as the tensity of the atmosphere 


20 


LETTER NUMBER FOUR 


proved. It was, to my mind, in every sense a great per¬ 
formance. I have seen very few worthy to compare with 
it. 


Is Marie happier about her part ? I hope so. If one’s 
work is not also a pleasure its quality inevitably suffers. 
What joy acting can be—in the right conditions. But the part 
must be good and the play must be good, and one’s fellow 
actors must be good, sympathetic and technically able. 
Yes, and then one may act like an archangel and if the play 
fails the effort is wasted so far as recognition is concerned. 
But I trust your Sister may enjoy all those happy con¬ 
ditions and success to crown them. 

Yours unreservedly, 


21 


LETTER V 


London 

27 th June , 1918. 

I have had to lunch with me to-day a man, friend of the 
author, who professes to be most anxious to back the play 
I am now working on ; that serious modern play, you know, 
that was a farce and shouldn’t have been. I hesitate to 
use the word “ drama,” for it usually conveys a wrong 
impression, though Tragedy, Comedy, Farce or Burlesque 
are all really Drama. The word means “ the thing in 
action.” But if one says “drama,” someone is sure to echo 
with a sneer “ Ho, melodrama! ” not knowing what 
that means either, for it is used with a different shade of 
sense by everyone who abuses it. Its correct use is a 
large and interesting subject which we will one day try to 
thresh out. 

But now, before I answer your last, I must tell you some¬ 
thing about myself. A friend in the Air Ministry has sug¬ 
gested a way in which I might make myself useful in quite 
possible conditions. He thinks he can get me an offer 
of work in the Sea-planes Contracts Department. It would 
mean giving up all present business and any thought of 
acting for the hours are very long and it would take six months 
to make me worth my job. I loathe the idea of driving 
a quill for a living. I did that—Oh, how many years 
ago ?—in a Solicitor’s office in St. Swithin’s Lane, for five 
shillings a week ; and read Dumas when I wasn’t addressing 
envelopes or copying briefs in my fresh-from-school copper¬ 
plate. I think dear old Dumas taught me more than the 
lawyer did. I have not yet quite made up my mind. It 
is not that I want to leave acting but it seems that acting 
has very definitely left me. No one wants my work and 


22 


LETTER NUMBER FIVE 


the waiting is weary, discouraging and expensive. The 
kind I am doing now—I mean the play-tinkering—is interest¬ 
ing and not unremunerative—when I can get enough of 
it. But it was invented only as an adjunct to the acting; 
at present it has nothing to junct to. 

Now for your letter. You ask me for further opinions of 
the Stage of to-day as compared with the wonderful Eighties. 
The Paper Controller might object, and with good reason, 
long before I had said my say if I expressed even half I 
feel, but I doubt my pen’s faculty even for so much. 

You are right to pillory Miss-if that is the lady’s 

name. It is an iniquity that such incompetence should 
be allowed professionally to flaunt its ineptitude in any first- 
class theatre. But is it not typical of the whole situation ? 
And yet, as I have told you, things are, I believe, more 
promising than they have been at any time since the begin¬ 
ning of the Nineties, for I seem to sense a return to Drama— 
a desire on the part of the public to be amused and enter¬ 
tained by real acting that shall give them an emotional 
uplift after their dreary drenching in the greyness of Man¬ 
chester mist. Oh, those depressing Lancashire plays ! 
How they bear down upon the spirit and send one, “ in 
dumps, so dull and heavy,” dolefully to bed !—even the 
farces, clever as they may be. I remember one quite funny 
in an undertaking sort of way—they are usually about coffins, 
gin-drinking, penury, cheating and every sordid kind of sexual 
relationship. That is the Lancashire form of humour. 

But managers are beginning to feel that the public want 
Light, Hope, Virility, Action, yet after so many years of 
problem and theory and of type acting, they hardly know 
where to turn for actors who could put Drama across. 
No commercial manager dare risk a Shakespearean production 


23 


C 



LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


without a Star. He knows it wouldn’t pay even with one 
unless done with fitting equipment. You can’t recon¬ 
stitute a period for the masses with two pillars and a 
horizon cloth and the terrible impositions of labour make 
adequate production economically impossible. The 
Old Vic. may persevere and do splendid training work in 
the Waterloo Road but move the Company and productions 
as they stand into Shaftesbury Avenue and they would play 
to empty benches. The audiences in West End theatres 
have a right to the best in every detail; mere competent 
performance and make-believe setting are not worth the 
price of admission. 

But Drama will come. Demand creates supply in acting 
as in everything else and there are hopeful signs for those 
who can read. 

For Chu-Chin-Chow, A Little Bit of Fluff, Romance, 
and other war-time products, which satisfy the public’s 
taste at the moment, I have little respect; but there are 
ominous grumblings. There is a slump now but if the 
revival does not give the public what it wants the “ dis¬ 
tant rumours ” will develop into thunder. 

It seems necessary to get events in very long perspective 
in order to perceive which of them were landmarks. I 
don’t believe anyone saw how vital to the whole business 
of the Theatre, in the artistic as well as the commercial 
sense, was the production of The Second Mrs. Tanqueray ; 
and it was years before I realised that the high-water mark 
of excellence in my time was reached in the Eighties. The 
Theatre then had not lost its mystery, which must always 
form a great part of its appeal, and in those days that was 
maintained by the dignity of many productions and per¬ 
formances. In addition to Irving we had the Kendals 


24 


LETTER NUMBER FIVE 


at their best. We had the fine virility of Barrett and his 
Company which included his brother George, E. S. Willard, 
John Maclean, Walter Speakman, Charles Hudson, Chaibs 
Fulton, and that fine old actor, Clifford Cooper. The 
dramas at Drury Lane and the Adelphi with Henry Neville, 
William Terriss (when he wasn’t at the Lyceum), Charles 
Warner, James Fernandez, J. D. Beveridge, Charles Cart¬ 
wright, W. L. Abingdon, Charles Glenny, all men, who 
though they excelled in certain parts, could play anything 
they might be cast for, and play it well; indeed as I con¬ 
sider their names I know I am safe in saying that they would 
play any part remarkably. 

But it was not only on the stage ; the attitude of the 
public was more dignified towards the Theatre. It expected 
more. It exacted more. It was severely critical and even, 
on occasion, harsh; but its praise, its appreciation were well 
worth striving for. 

The Press, too, treated the Drama with a more responsible 
consideration. I don’t say they said more about it. They 
didn’t. Indeed not half as much, but what they said was 
more carefully weighed and to the purpose. The exploita¬ 
tion of personalities was not allowed. No excuse was made 
for inexperience. In fact the young man or woman who 
was patently incapable of playing anything other than the 
part for which they might be cast by virtue of certain 
obvious qualities, was found defective in technical training 
and told very bluntly to go to the provinces and learn his 
job. I say nothing of the cheap device of paragraphing 
intimate domestic details which have no concern either for 
the public or the Theatre. It was unknown. It would 
not have been tolerated for one moment by a discriminating 
Pit, who were the mouthpiece of public opinion and 


25 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


went to the Theatre to enjoy Acting and for no other 
reason. 

Critics wrote with knowledge of their subject; they did 
not confine themselves to generalities ; they appreciated 
nice points of technique, weighed the value of business, 
discussed readings, analysed and gave chapter and verse 
in support of their decisions, which, in consequence, won 
respect from both public and profession. Clement Scott, 
who wrote for The Daily Telegraph , could make or mar an 
actor or a production, for at that time his critiques were 
reasoned arguments. Later he lost his head. He failed 
to understand Ibsen and his power waned partly by reason 
of his vulgar abuse of that master-playwright. 

There were others whose integrity was unassailable, 
notably Joseph Knight, who swayed public opinion because 
they were capable, scholarly and, above all, logical. 

To tell you of the performances that they justly praised 
would fill a volume. Someday w r e may talk of some of 
them—that is to say I shall talk and you will listen ! 

And to-day-? 

Well, I am sure the Stage has many w r ell-wishers among 
the critics ; but how many of them have a standard to criti¬ 
cise by ? How can they have ? What have they seen ? 
No acting that can by any means be called great. I speak 
of the men of under forty. Some of the old brigade are 
happily still w r ith us, but I don’t think many of them write 
notices now. G. E. Morrison of The Morning Post must 
remember, Chance Newton of The Referee and Malcolm 
Watson of The Daily Telegraph ; there may be others ; 
but I think sometimes that even these forget. 

Don’t misunderstand me : there have been many fine 
performances of recent years, but mostly in ephemeral 


26 



LETTER NUMBER FIVE 


plays. The greatest acting must have for its setting a great 
play. It must be a Macbeth , a Hamlet , an Othello or an 
(Edipus; but great acting can be achieved irrespective 
of the literary quality of its vehicle if the emotions and 
passions are skilfully dealt with and the character properly 
proportioned—in a word, if the psychological development 
be just. 

I would walk barefoot to the Strand and wait all day in 
the jam at the Pit door and fight my way in, as many a time 
I have done—it adds a zest to the enjoyment entirely 
lacking in the “ patient ass ” attitude of the queue—if I 
might see again some performances I have seen and some 
that, like an idiot, I missed. I would do it gladly. Yes, 
at my age. But to-day in our world—as I suppose in 
most others—it is the blatant, loud-voiced, self-advertising, 
Barnum type, the square-jawed, with so little sense of pro¬ 
portion—or humour—that often having only the smallest 
modicum of capability they yet think themselves mighty 
geniuses, who force their way to the top and, marvellous 
to relate, are accepted at their own valuation. Or the 
suave, politic charlatans, who have flourished in all ages, 
like-Well, like Garrick, let us say. 

I wouldn’t for the world have you learn to beat a drum, 
my Redgie, but I’m thinking of taking lessons myself for 
the benefit of my few friends. 

Yours benignly. 


27 



LETTER VI 


London 

8th July , 1918. 

Unbalanced, am I ? Are you throwing me a bouquet, 
Redgie ? All artists are unbalanced ; at least I wouldn’t 
give a hang for the one who wasn’t so occasionally. Still 
artists being unbalanced does not prove that the unbalanced 
are artists. Quite right, my Redgie, and I sit corrected. 

And I suppose, too, one cannot strive to be an artist ; 
one is or one isn’t, and many think they are who never will 
be ; and maybe some, who don’t know it, are—which may 
sound involved, but isn’t. 

I may have been unbalanced in the days of my ambition. 
I’m as sane now as the Duke of York’s column, which always 
strikes me as the perfect analogue of overcooked suet pud¬ 
ding. Occasionally I feel I want to do things but the desire 
soon flickers down. You’ve got to—simply must! You 
want opportunity which your temperament disdains to seek 
for itself. Well, I told you I was going to take lessons on 
the drum. All you need is indication as to which door you 
should knock at. The pen is not only “ mightier than the 
sword ” it is a master-key that unlocks for him who has 
the gift to apply it. I shall seek the door. 

Chris comes to town next week to play her drama—very 
well then, Melodrama, if you like—in a Suburban Music 
Hall. I dread to see it but of course I shall. I saw 
the play years ago at the old Marylebone Theatre, almost 
forgotten now. I know the child must be terribly over¬ 
weighted by her part. 

So you think the critics are more humane to-day; 
“ kinder ” you call them and the Public more tolerant- 


28 


LETTER NUMBER SIX 


Granted. But what is the result ? Art does not thrive 
on kindness and toleration. The standard becomes 
lower and to-day the standard is deplorable. Those 
who don’t insist on having the best never get it. 
The Theatre was always an amusement—a pastime, now 
it is only that. It has been and may still become 
something better as well; an intellectual refreshment, 
educational without seeming to be so. The Gregory’s 
powder of moral precept administered in the strawberry 
jam of entertainment, but, like the child, if the public 
detects the Gregory’s powder it will never again look at the 
strawberry jam. That is what the dismal dramas of the 
last twenty years have been doing for a large per¬ 
centage of potential playgoers. 

And you object to my calling Garrick a charlatan. 44 De 
mortuis nil nisi bonum ” you quote and say I can prove 
nothing. 

As for your quotation : isn’t when they’re dead the kind¬ 
est as well as the safest time to criticise them ? It may 
not be very helpful to them but it’s enlightening for us and 
certainly it’s safer—unless they happen to have great- 
grandsons with shot-guns. 

Yes, I know Hogarth’s picture, and, to me, the fact 
that the artist immortalised the waking moment of Richard 
after his soul-torturing dream in the person of Garrick 
proves nothing but that the painter wished to advertise 
his friend. 

Now listen patiently for a few minutes: Garrick 
was undoubtedly a man of culture and accomplishment, 
a master of the social art and full of parlour tricks. His 
anecdotes, his imitations, his studies of various types of 
bumpkinhood were cameos of characterisation. As a mimic 


29 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


he was supreme. His india-rubber face baffled Reynolds 
and every other artist who attempted to portray him. But 
when we apply to him the acid test of Shakespearean 
impersonation how does he stand as Actor ? 

Finding himself hampered by the classic tradition he 
decided to rid himself of its conventions ; not content with 
Shakespeare’s plays as written he edited, altered and 
re-wrote them to suit the idiosyncrasies of his own 
personality. 

Consider his treatment of The Taming of the Shrew : he 
cut the Induction and Act I and condensed the remaining 
four Acts into three. Of these he hacked the text un¬ 
mercifully, changing words and phrases to suit his fancy 
and interpolating verses of his own in their midst. Kathar¬ 
ine’s celebrated speech he cut into three portions ; discarding 
the first and last, he hashed the middle cut, giving it a new 
sense by rearrangement and brought down the curtain on 
a couplet of which, nevertheless, he changed the text, 
taken from the body of the aforesaid speech. 

In the last Act of Romeo and Juliet he devised and 
interpolated one of those scenes of passion in which he 
imagined himself to excel, waking up Juliet in the tomb 
for the purpose of exhibiting his tour de force* If you are 
disposed to forgive this you will hesitate when you consider 
the banal phrases he had the impudence to mix with 
Shakespeare’s verse : Juliet, awakening, exclaims : 

“ Bless Me ! How Cold it is.” 

Later:— 

Juliet : “ Death’s in thy face.” 

* In Garrick’s preface to his acting version of Borneo and Juliet , 
published by Tonson, 1758, he states that his principal design was to 
“ clear the original as much as possible from the jingle and quibble 
which were always the objection to the reviving it.” My italics, Ed. 

SO 



LETTER NUMBER SIX 


Romeo : “ It is indeed ; 

“I struggle with him now. My powers are blasted 
“’Twixt death and life I’m torn, I am distracted! 

“But death is strongest.” 

How’s that ? 

In preparing his version of A Midsummer Night's Dream 
he omitted, naturally, those vulgar persons the Clowns. 
As he also cut the love scenes of Lysander and Hermia, 
Demetrius and Helena it is difficult to understand what he 
retained. However he dropped in twenty-eight musical 
numbers, to many of which he graciously contributed the 
words. 

He cut the first three Acts of A Winter's Tale and 
elaborated the remainder taking full credit for the 
authorship. 

He “ expurgated "Hamlet and this is how he excused himself: 
“ I had sworn I would not leave the Stage till I had rescued 
that noble play from all the rubbish of the fifth Act. I 
have brought it out without the Grave-diggers’ trick and 
the fencing match.” 

Modest little fellow, wasn’t he ? 

This self-styled “ worshipper of Shakespeare ” used 
Colley Cibber’s arrangement of Richard the.Third, in itself 
an excellent drama. It was compiled by its author from 
various sources, for Cibber borrowed freely from Richard 
the Second , and Henry the Fourth , Fifth and Sixth. 

It is only just to tell you that all the leading actors 
who followed Garrick to Irving used this arrangement. 

Perhaps Garrick created his greatest tragic impression in 
King Lear. But how ? Not by delineation of Shakespeare’s 
majestic creation but in a version prepared for him by the 
hymn-writer, Nahum Tate, wherein Cordelia survived to 
marry Edgar, while Lear, having vanquished the villains 


51 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


sent to murder him and killing two in a vigorous stage 
fight, joined the lovers’ hands. 

The vulgarity of this popular edition suggests that, 
as in the other works which Garrick himself edited, psycholog¬ 
ical development was sacrificed to pure theatricality. 

You can judge from all this the exact measure of Garrick’s 
admiration for Shakespeare. My suspicion is that there was 
a poet and actor for whom he had still greater admiration 
and I leave you to guess his name. 

Shakespeare was not good enough for Garrick, so he 
mutilated him. 

Was this proof of genius ? 

No doubt—if we allow that Garrick was greater than 
Shakespeare. 

I should not be so particular in all this detail were it 
not that we have the pre-eminence of Garrick for ever 
rammed down our throats. Still you may feel that I 
have not yet made out my case—that proving him guilty 
of vandalism does not disprove his greatness as an actor. 
I said he was a charlatan, one who “ chatters in order to 
deceive,” and all I have established is that he had no rever¬ 
ence for Shakespeare. Also you think you detect bias 
against him in one phrase I have used : “a scene of passion 
in which he imagined himself to excel” Perhaps he 
did excel in such scenes, I am willing to give him that 
and that alone is sufficient to have established his popularity ; 
though he couldn’t have been better than Warner as Coupeau 
or Pateman in the final frenzy of Quilp and no one proposes 
to canonize them. 

I did not say Garrick could not act, but I did and do say 
he was not worthy, as an actor, to hold the highest place 
in our national estimation. 


32 


LETTER NUMBER SIX 


The greatest artist is he who attains greatness in his 
portrayal of the greatest conceptions. 

Irving did not owe his greatness to the crise des 
nerfs in The Bells nor Kean to the epilepsy of Sir Giles 
Overreach. 

Read the scene of Richard’s awakening on Bosworth 
morning as arranged by Cibber and the interpolated domestic 
scene with Lady Anne. You will find them actor-proof, 
that is to say : given certain technical skill even a bad 
actor will get away with them. 

Why, Edmund Tearle did it. 

No doubt Garrick was able to create an atmosphere of 
similar poignancy for his dying Romeo. I should like to 
have seen him receive the news of Juliet’s death—to have 
heard him say: “ Then I defy you stars! ” By those moments 
I judge Romeo. We are told of Garrick’s effects in his 
scenes with the Ghost in Hamlet. The appreciation that 
Fielding put into Partridge’s mouth is accepted generally 
as good evidence. If Partridge were a character of Shaw’s 
it might be evidence of his creator’s own opinion ; but I 
credit Fielding as a better artist and refuse to acknowledge 
Partridge as a competent critic of the Drama. Still 
allowing Garrick those particular effects they are not the 
actor’s final test as Hamlet. 

How he “ brought off ” the last Act without the Grave¬ 
diggers and the fencing match I cannot say. 

In Macbeth no doubt he was impressive in the Murder 
Scene. Who isn’t ? But here again the scene of passion 
is not the supreme issue. I prefer to reserve judgment 
till I have witnessed the disintegration. 

I have no information on his performance of Othello 
and Shylock, if indeed he played these parts. Yet it is to 


33 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


be supposed that, if he did in fact excel in scenes of 
passion, he cannot have shirked or let slip the transcendant 
opportunity Othello affords. The growth from marble 
impassivity to white-hot fury culminating in epileptic 
seizure is probably the greatest psychological achievement 
of Shakespeare and is the supreme test of the tragic actor’s 
powers. If Garrick passed this test his fame might well 
have rested on that alone . Even Lear, though requiring per¬ 
haps more staying power—for who shall give its full effect 
to the tremendous curse, pass through the storm and the 
great scene of the three contrasted types of dementia on the 
top of his form and then crown all by exposition of the 
foundered grandeur of the climax without succumbing to the 
physical strain ?—does not call for such complete mastery 
of every phase of tragic expression as does the agony of 
the Moor. 

These heights are not approached in Shylock which, it 
may be supposed, was regarded by Garrick as a comic 
character and therefore beneath his dignity. “ The red- 
haired Jew ” had been so treated by all its chief exponents 
since Burbage until Macklin corrected the error. It might 
be supposed that England’s Greatest Actor would himself 
have instituted this reform. 

But no ; it was as Abel Drugger in Ben Jonson’s Alchemist 
—altered by Garrick (naturally !) to suit himself and re¬ 
named The Apothecary —that he achieved his great triumph ; 
but his greatest was to apply his business method, learned 
in the wine trade, to the management of Drury Lane Theatre 
and conceal his commercial flair by a charming social manner, 
while he judiciously advertised himself by reciting at my 
lady Furbelow’s rout and by replying for the ladies at my 
lord Bullion’s supper party. And it is upon all this that his 


34 


LETTER NUMBER SIX 


immortality is founded rather than upon performances 
of our Great Playwright’s masterpieces. 

The fact is Garrick was the Fashion and to-day this 
personal popularity would have earned for him a knighthood. 

The play called David Garrick with the cast-iron part 
that we all have a shot at some time or other—and all think 
we are wonderful because audiences invariably cheer us, 
however technically, physically or temperamentally un¬ 
suited we may be — has nothing whatever to do with the 
real Garrick. Robertson adapted it from a French Play 
called Sullivan (which sounds Irish) and the French author 
took it from the German. The lady who became Mrs. 
Garrick was never the daughter of a City Alderman but was 
a Viennese dancer named Eva Viegel who changed it to 
Violette by command of her patron the Empress Maria- 
Theresa. She survived Garrick, lived to applaud Kean and 
died in 1823, aged ninety-eight. 

There have been dozens of adaptations of Sullivan , 
one or two of them even better acting vehicles than Robert¬ 
son’s. It has often been said, even in print, that the 
play was an adaptation of a drama by Alexandre Dumas. 
This is wrong. Dumas wrote Kean ou Genie et Desordre y 
which also has often been adapted and to this day is a 
favourite, especially in Germany, but it has no more to do 
with Edmund Kean than Sullivan has to do with David 
Garrick. 

Don’t forget we must fix up that meeting when Chris 
returns to town and before you leave. 

I look forward to it. 

Yours hopefully, 

P.S. —Yes, Garrick did play Othello but Betterton’s “ far 
exceeded ” his performance. 


LETTER VII 


In the train for Bexhill, 

20 th July , 1918. 

I was up at 0 for this journey—had to wait in a huge 
mob at the booking office and got a ticket at 10.40—into 
the train at 12.10 after waiting all that hour and a half in 
a dense crowd, and the train is not due out until 1.55. How 
is that for patience ! I am looking forward to lunch— 
have not eaten for twenty-four hours—when I got to the 
club at 9.30 last night it w r as too late for food—there, or 
at any restaurant. I w r as on my feet all yesterday and 
after standing in that blessed ticket queue for nearly three 
hours I am just about played out. But I believe one can 
get a whiskey and soda at 12.30-. Anyw r ay I am in a lun¬ 
cheon car, thank the gods ! 

Help! 

No w hiskey till the train starts, but I am promised a ham 
sandw ich. O woeful and inadequate substitute ! 

I had to rush down here to minister to that play of which 
I told you. You shall hear more of it anon. 

Sir Anderson Critchett is the man your Mother positively 
must see. He is easily the first oculist we have and, 
incidentally, one of the very best friends of our profession. 
Ignore the two opinions you have already had for her ; 
his w r ord will settle the question. 

R. C. Carton, you know, is Critchett’s brother. He used 
to act—married Miss Compton and now writes plays to 
suit her personality. She can play her very mannered 
self rather attractively. Carton turns his phrases well, 
and by getting good support for her in the other parts the 
things pass off rather delightfully. I remember how thor¬ 
oughly I enjoyed The Great Pink Pearl (in which Cecil 


86 


LETTER NUMBER SEVEN 


Raleigh collaborated). Lord and Lady Algy gave Hawtrey 
one of his best chances. In Lady HuntwortKs Experiment 
and Wheels Within Wheels I saw Miss Vane, a real actress, 
in the parts designed for Miss Compton and thoroughly 
enjoyed both comedies. 

Well, at last I have seen your Marie act and I am entirely 
delighted. No, not entirely, for I did not approve her play¬ 
ing such a part. Make no mistake, I am not squeamish. 
I think of it only from a business standpoint. The play 
is clever—reminds me of one I saw at the Grand Guignol — 
but the author should be eternally grateful to Mademoiselle 
Marie. She exposed for us the dignity and forcefulness 
of a wretched personality with a superb technique. But I 
wish she would never play the part again. I am so afraid 
someone who matters commercially may see her. You 
know—don’t you ?—that the fools who run our theatres 
(like most of the critics) always confuse player with part. 
Should a manager chance to see her I imagine him offering 
her some beastly cat to play—probably without the oppor¬ 
tunities this part gives—that would do her more harm than 
good. Her metier is, obviously, tragic lead. I saw in 
her a Queen Katharine, Emilia, yes, and Lady Macbeth ; 
and there were flashes of lightness that promised Beatrice 
and Olivia, Katharine the Shrew, inevitably, and—can 
I say Viola ? Portia, certainly, were it not that Portia’s 
“ sunny locks hang on her temples like a golden fleece.” 
And a fair wig would spoil her. She could play Belvidera 
if anyone had the pluck to attempt a revival of Otway’s 
Venice Preserved , but above all Mariana in The Wife. How 
I long to produce that play ! 

I have decided to give the Sea-planes a miss and, in case 
conscience should prick, to take my chance before the 


37 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


National Service Board. I can’t think I shall be of the 
slightest use to them. My card will be endorsed “ Old 
Horse, long in the tooth, send to the knacker’s.” But 
seriously, though I am heaps better in health, I fear I should 
be rather a liability than an asset in any sort of military 
capacity. 

I want to see Marie act something worthy of her. I 
know she has had disappointments but early success kills 
endeavour. What is of value that has no cost ? And who 
enjoys the sweets as he who has tasted the bitters ! (Please 
pardon platitude.) No, I am no longer cynical. Cynicism 
is narrow and weak. In my cynical years I said : I live 
only to pay my debts. That I will do, but not now in that 
spirit. I have been made to suffer—justly ; four months 
ago, when I thought I was at the end, I saw that—also I 
lost Fear. Are you laughing at my earnestness ? Yes, 
I can see you. Well, I am in earnest, but I have not lost 
my sense of humour I hope. I know my gaucheries 
and many failings. 

“ Do you know them all ? ” you ask. 

Incorrigible Redgie ! No, of course I don’t. Who does 
know all his failings ? for his worst is probably the one he 
takes most pride in as a virtue. 

Chris arrived on Sunday, like a gipsy, brown and shabby, 
and on Monday I went to see her act. Oh Redgie, it was a 
great shock—really rather bitter. The play and Company 
were too awful and Chris was certainly not the best of them 
—if not quite* the worst. Poor child, when I went to her 
dressing-room she nearly broke down. I wanted to myself. 
It’s not her fault, she is entirely over-weighted and— 
Look here, Redgie, I’Id forgive Chris anything—as long as 
she was sincere, not deceiving herself or spoiling the funda- 


38 


LETTER NUMBER SEVEN 


mental Truth that I believe is in her—anything, but bad 
acting. That I can’t stand ; stilted, artificial, sing-song, 
without heart or meaning—perfunctory walking through— 
ignorant, sluttish giggling, insulting author (whether Mel¬ 
ville or Shakespeare) by inattention and carelessness, all 
this is nauseous to me. 

I’m not accusing Chris of this, her weakness is due mainly 
to inexperience, but it’s the kind of vice that is bred in 
the school she’s in—Yes, and practised in higher places. 

I have met some of the people in Chris’ Company and I 
do wish they were better type. Our profession is extra¬ 
ordinarily educative. All sorts come into it and some of 
the best actors have risen literally from the gutter and no 
one would ever have suspected it. But there is a kind, 
and there are many of it, that has no recommendation what¬ 
ever, except that it is cheap. They are to be found in 
all these small Drama Companies in most of the third— 
and fourth—rate theatres. There can be no possible future 
for them and their presence on the Stage is an impenetrable 
mystery. They get the calling a bad name among 
the many who still regard us as rogues and vagabonds. 
I’m not complaining of their morals, they are not my affair. 
With me manners were ever more important than morals. 
It is when immorality flaunts its bad manners that I won’t 
tolerate it. 

I am reminded of a story two very decent people told me ; 
on enquiring a Landlady’s terms : “ If you’re really married,” 
she said, 44 the rooms are twelve shillings, but if it’s one 
o’ them there theat’ical arrangements I want fifteen ’cos 
they burn so much gas.” 

Chris has friends in this Company that I don’t approve. 
All I ask is that she should not be ashamed of them—that 

39 


D 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


she shall talk to me frankly of them. As long as she says : 
They are my friends I am ready to give them what 
respect I can. 

You remember what I said about keeping the interest of 
our friends : when we care, really care, our interest is ever¬ 
green, it must be. It may lapse for moments and vary with 
health, mental and physical, but as long as the real caring 
exists the interest can never die. It’s not the interest we 
have to worry about but the caring, when that becomes an 
effort even God can’t help. The point being that if the 
caring is real, founded on faith and respect, it must last for 
its qualities are eternal. But so often we are mistaken 
and sometimes we don’t even take trouble to deceive our¬ 
selves. That’s piteous. I have no belief in the ties of 
blood engendering affection, I know it did not with me 
towards my parents, and I like to be very sure—as I am— 
that it has nothing to do with the friendship between Chris 
and me. 

You haven’t misunderstood what I said of my parents, 
have you, Redgie ? My Father was the best friend a boy 
ever had. It is a lasting grief to me that as a man I was 
never allowed the joy of his comradeship. My Mother, 
who survived him for thirty years, had only one fault, she 
idolised me. 

Back in London , Tuesday. 

I didn’t post this—couldn’t make time to finish it down 
there. Now I return to find Chris with a temperature. 
I’m afraid she had ’flu. I ordered eucalyptus, quinine and 
cinnamon. The child is ill, should not be playing at all 
but there is no understudy and she must. 

I suppose we all go through that experience. I have been 
carried to the wings, lifted on to a rostrum, and given a push 


40 


LETTER NUMBER SEVEN 


to send me on ; then played a heavy scene and collapsed on 
the exit. But I know no better tonic than being obliged 
to act when you’re ill and many actors have admitted to me 
that that has been their experience. I have known cases 
when it has practically effected a cure ; undoubtedly because 
to act, even moderately well, one must forget self entirely 
and the ill not dwelt upon heals by the process of nature. 

But I’m afraid it’s not a good cure for ’flu and Chris is 
too young and delicate for the strain. 

We have had a strenuous week-end and done a tremendous 
amount of work on the play and it’s settled to produce it 
—to “ try it out ” anyway for two or three weeks. No 
Star would play the part now because of the other man, 
but the result of the changes is quite remarkable for the 
process of cutting him down has built him up, but you 
can’t get some actors to realise that the centre of the stage 
and all the speeches will never make a part if its proportions 
are wrong. As for the woman ; the part has been so altered 
to fit a friend of the backer, who can never play it, that 
it has become worthy of a real actress. 

I feel sure it will be good, striking even ; but I fear it 
won’t have a box-office appeal. And in the end, you know, 
the Public is always right. That doesn’t mean that every 
play it approves is good or that what it condemns is invariably 
bad, but there is something of good always in what it likes 
and be sure there is a psychological kink in everything 
it damns. 

Yours as usual, 


41 


LETTER VIII 


London 

lsf August , 1918. 

It is a fact, well known, that “Mary was a housemaid,” 
but Marie was always a Princess. We were a quaint 
party, weren’t we, Redgie ? an odd assortment of humans. 
Though three of us belonged to the same profession what 
miles of difference between the types ! But we had your 
wisdom and savoir faire as common denominator, and, thus 
reconciled, we formed an ideal parti carre —to my thinking, 
anyway. And I take credit to myself for the selection of 
the milieu. The Connaught was an inspiration, not quite 
smart enough to form an ideal setting for the Princess’ 
panache , but not actually stodgy. I don’t fit in the Picca¬ 
dilly and Chris would be shy there. Your unconscious 
aplomb is proof against environment and the Princess 
would sail sublimely unconscious of surroundings through 
Petticoat Lane or the Gardens of the Vatican. 

Of course Chris adores her ; though a little in awe of you. 
I dug out my Byron, told her to dip into it and imagine you 
the author. “ Familiarity,” I said, “ may breed a better 
appreciation.” “ It’s the way of looking right through you,” 
she said, “ with a sort of encouraging smile which yet some¬ 
how lets you know it’s not really rude to pry right into your 
thoughts ; ” which proves that Chris has not yet developed 
full consciousness of her inheritance as a feminine. For 
we know, don’t we, Redgie ? that any intelligent woman can 
read the ordinary decent man—know him through and 
through—in a month if she cares to and gauge to a nicety 
what he will do, how he will feel and act in any given cir¬ 
cumstances. Perhaps that is why they so often seem to 
find the scamps more attractive. 


42 


LETTER NUMBER EIGHT 


I’m so glad you agree with me about Iris Hoey. I felt 
sure I was safe in recommending Billeted for after lunch. 
I had seen it before and found it delightful, but then I 
always love Iris Hoey if she has enough—and good enough 
—to do. I wish we could see her do something more really 
worthy of her. Years ago I remember her as Ariel, when 
Tree sent The Tempest on tour, but she was immature then. 
I wish she had stuck to Shakespeare. I believe she might 
have done great things. Iris Hoey in Comedy and Miriam 
Lewes in Tragedy ought to be doing the best Legitimate 
work to-day ; they could if they had had the chance. I 
know no others in any sort of position with their poten¬ 
tialities for such work. 

I didn’t like that production of The Tempest , but how to 
do it properly ?—if it must be put upon the stage. I’m 
afraid I don’t see the necessity. 

And that reminds me, Redgie, don’t write the title of a 
play as a quotation. It is wrong. I know even critics 
do it—or the compositors—but it’s not grammar. Names 
of plays, books, songs, newspapers should be printed in 
italics or written underlined. And if you wished to repeat, 
for example, what The Times said of THE TIMES (Pinero’s 
play) then put the newspaper in italics and the play’s name 
in block capitals. Charles Mathews wrote a Comedy 
(from Dumas’ Le Mari de la Veuve) which he called Why did 
you Die ? If ever a title deserved inverted commas surely 
that was it, for the phrase was repeated all through the piece; 
but it would be wrong as to quote What are the Wild Waves 
Saying ? Claribel’s song (I think it was Claribel’s) which my 
Father most loved to hear my Mother sing, when I was so 
high. They were the most untheatrical people imaginable, 
but I remember going with them to At Homes at Elizabeth 


43 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


Philp’s, a well-known composer of ballads in her time, 
whose drawing room was an artistic rendez-vous , in fact 
the typical Salon of those days. Charles Dickens had a 
house in the same street, Miss Philp lived opposite to us 
and Antoinette Stirling down the road. I was presented 
to her and Mackinlay the day he married her. At Miss 
Philp’s Tree and George Grossmith (before Gilbert and 
Sullivan Opera days) used to visit and Harry Proctor and 
Signor Foli and many others as famous and more so in the 
literary and artistic world. It was my first glimpse 
of it. 

The Regent’s Park Canal explosion in November, I think, 
of 1874—caused by a gentleman in charge of a barge full 
of gunpowder being careless with a match after lighting 
his pipe under a bridge : parts of the barge were afterwards 
disentangled from parts of the bridge (I saw them !) but no 
part of the gentleman—shook us all in our beds. I started 
awake thinking it a thunder clap. Every pane of glass in 
the front of every third house on our side of the street was 
shattered ; the same occurred to the back windows of the 
houses opposite. 

The first serious play I remember was Othello at the Park 
Theatre, Camden Town—no longer existent. And my 
first Pantomime-But that’s a long story. 

We start rehearsing next week. I gave you the cast at 
lunch, and I’m glad you think it a promising venture. Act I 
I have no doubt about; it is full of grip and intensity. 
It’s to o dead easy to write a first Act or there wouldn’t be 
so many bad plays ; the advantages of opening a new sub¬ 
ject with new characters are enormous; the trouble is not 
to write as good but much better Acts to follow it, for in 
them one no longer has those advantages. Our change 


44 





LETTER NUMBER EIGHT 


of venue in Act II has its good points and bad. The Public 
hates to be switched off if it’s interested; on the 
other hand the new characters are some compensation and 
they will be very well played. Act III is good, I think ; 
and the climax cast-iron. Act IV is the crux. Suspense 
is well sustained and the development is logically inevitable ; 
yet whether the Public will be interested in a good woman 
and two really splendid men without reference to the eternal 
sex problem I can’t say, but I believe so. Of course I 
have no end of worrying business to attend to ; the backers 
are un-(theatrical) professional and regard me with much 
suspicion. I wish we could have the advantage of your 
sincerity and quick perception at some of the final rehearsals, 
but your house will be ready by then and you’ll have left 
London. 

What a business your redecoration must be ! But I 
feel quite confident that every wheel will revolve with the 
perfectest precision—every picture will smile—or frown— 
in his foreordained niche—there will be not even the faintest 
odour of new paint to greet you. 

Your Mother has an eye that commands implicit obedience 
and a smile that rewards it. All will be carried out “ accord¬ 
ing to—her—plan.” Do tell me what colour the front door 
is—but don’t tell me if it’s green. Not that I object, 
exactly, to a green front door, but I know it would give me 
a sad sense of disappointment—disillusionment. But it’s 
absurd—impossible on the face of it, your Mother wouldn’t 
tolerate a green front door. She simply couldn’t. 

The house I want and shall never have has low ceilings, 
oak beams, Italian carving above and around the open 
hearths, quaint doorways with steps up or down into every 
room, odd corners and winding stairs, stained glass and 


45 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


old tapestries, and on all sides glimpses of an old-world 
garden with moss-covered steps and flag-stones— 

What foolishness ! 

Yours, 

PS .—Chris reminds me that Byron had a bad reputation. 
I tell her there are scores of people W’ho make it their 
business to ferret out details of the private lives of public 
men with which they have properly no concern. 

What matters it that Byron was morose, mordant, 
sometimes unmannerly—even uncouth ? He gave us Cain 
and this jewel of wisdom :— 

“.He who joy would win 

“ Must share it; happiness was born a twin.” 


46 



LETTER IX 


London 

18th August , 1918. 

They kept me two hours at the Medical Board and it 
was one of the very disagreeablest experiences I have ever 
endured. But, thank goodness, it was a warm day ! 

The first doctor was bearded and grumpy. I expect— 
poor man !—he was weary to death of his most unenter¬ 
taining job. The second was frightening as a Sergeant- 
Major. It is true we w r ere a comic squad ; certainly not 
unruly, but utterly ignorant of the kind of discipline we 
were obviously expected to be acquainted with. I was as 
innocent of it as the very large coal-heaver who followed me 
or the small tailor who was dancing and blinking with 
irritation and anxiety to get back to his work and whom I 
followed. The third doctor was an agreeable surprise, a 
delightful chap. Perhaps I say this because he remembered 
having seen me play some ten years ago. A very good part 
it was, but his remembrance surprised me for I wore a very 
disguising make-up and on this occasion literally none of 
any sort. It proved to be as I anticipated. The Army 
will have none of me, Redgie. I am Grade 3B, and feel 
rather humiliated, especially as I took off as many years as I 
dared and was feeling really rather extra well. 

It would be hypocritical to say I am disappointed ; but 
the consciousness of uselessness is not gratifying to the 
vanity. 

And now here I am, dependent on managerial favour for 
my living and without the least hope, as far as I can see, of 
winning it. It is true that my side line is in rather more than 
less flourishing condition, but that is by no means a reliable 
source of income. I have been invited to work on a melo- 


47 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


drama-Ha, Melodrama ! Now we are there once more 

let us stay for a few minutes. 

What do people mean when they speak of melodrama ? 

Obviously they are not thinking of the old play with 
music, the drame melee du chant of the French Stage 
of which I believe Don Ctsar de Bazan was the first example 
in, I think, 1841. Frederic Lemaitre perceiving the possi¬ 
bilities of the part of Don Cesar (in Victor Hugo’s Ruy Bias , 
in which he had created the title role) created by his pupil 
Melingue, suggested to D’Ennery to make him the central 
figure of a play. Don Cesar was the result and in it the 
curtain fell on each Act to a concerted piece in operatic 
form ; there were one or two songs dropped into the dia¬ 
logue but its construction otherwise was on approved 
drama lines. 

The terms “ melodrama ” and “ melodramatic ” are used 
nowadays as opprobrious epithets—always ! The critics 
are very fond of them. To find a definition that would 
satisfy them would dissatisfy them, because it would limit 
their use of a favourite term of contemptuous abuse. 

A good play is one in which a credible and interesting 
story is unfolded by means of living characters, psycho¬ 
logically developed by incident. 

You must allow that. 

The story must be credible and interesting or there is 
no play worth considering. 

It must be unfolded by living characters, for human 
interest is essential. 

The characters must be psychologically developed or 
their untruth fails to convince. 

And the development must take place by means of inci¬ 
dent or the play is all talk and the audience goes to sleep. 


48 


LETTER NUMBER NINE 


Hamlet and Macbeth , if they did not happen to be written 
in great verse, would be called melodrama, for it is only 
the genius of Shakespeare that makes the stories credible. 
Sometimes this fact irks the critics terribly. They take 
their revenge, however, by calling an actor whose perform¬ 
ance of Hamlet or Macbeth they disapprove “ melodramatic.” 

Now what do they mean by that ? 

Simply that he is a bad actor—that his method is wrong— 
out of tune—over emphatic. Observe that feeble, underacted 
performances are not melodramatic, though they are just 
as wicked. Over-emphasis is a fault common even to good 
actors at first performances, generally the only time the 
critics see them, a fault that is usually corrected within 
a week. But critics prefer not to explain—to particularise— 
to assist by constructive criticism ; they must fling mud, 
and that is in fact what they mean to do in using that word. 

Logically the acting in Melodrama should be melodramatic. 
But no, that would make it too easy. They will praise an 
actor’s performance in a melodrama for being un-melo- 
dramatic—very high praise indeed ! And listen to this : 
they will even call Scenery melodramatic ! 

Now I ask you ? 

The sane way to use the word—if it must be used—is 
to allow that any play or scene that affords opportunity 
for the expression of emotion or passion is dramatic if it 
be properly and convincingly done and “ melodramatic ” 
if it be exaggerated. 

This is as true for Comedy as for Tragedy ; though the 
people who are most glib with the word would stare very 
hard if you called such monkeying as I have seen by the 
Grave-diggers in Hamlet “ melodramatic.” 

So much for the adjective. 


49 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


A melodrama, then, is one in which the author thinks 
nothing of the logical and psychological development of 
character but devises his incidents first, regardless of them. 

But that won’t do, for most of the great acting parts are 
in melodramas so-called, and they would not be great if 
they were not psychologically developed—if they were not 
credible, living beings. I need seek no further for an in¬ 
stance than Mathias in The Bells. 

Yet this play too falls under the ban and is classed as 
melodrama with The Girl Who Took the Wrong Turning. 

Is it not a crime to brand these together with the same 
stigma ?—to make no difference in the application of their 
term of scorn between the good play and the bad—between 
the perfect acting vehicle and the hotch-potch of impossible 
situation, illustrated by caricatures of humanity, thrown 
together without regard to unity, logic or common-sense, 
which is an insult to intelligence as it is an offence against 
Art? 

For my part I shall continue to call both Drama and avoid 
the use of a word that has no accepted significance ; I 
shall call Drama good when it fulfils the required conditions 
and bad when it offends them and leave the use of the 
offensive term to those who may choose to invest it with 
whatever measure of opprobrium their spleen suggests 
to them. 

And I hope, Redgie, that you will do the same. 

Yours dogmatically, 


50 


LETTER X 


London 

24 th August, 1918. 

Paradise bird wall-paper ! I’m afraid I should abominate 
that. Flowers are pretty bad ; but birds, game or tame, 
beasts, carnivorous or herbivorous, and fishes, freshwater 
or salt, seem to me intolerable as mural decoration. The 
“ damnable iteration ” of any design irritates, and—like 
those detestable buttons that pin the upholstery to the 
backs of railway-carriage seats and suggest illimitable radii, 
of which any one may be the centre—rivets attention and 
would ultimately induce mania did not beneficent Providence 
provide distracting counteraction—or counteracting dis¬ 
traction, whichever you please. 

Tell me ; do the pictures still hang, as they did, on the 
stairway ? Some of them would be shocked, I’m sure, to 
see themselves on a futurist background : The Morlands 
and the Cries of London. One of the charms of }^our 
letters, my dear Redgie, is a delightful vagueness, which 
affords ample scope for speculation as to what, precisely, 
you mean. You use the ellipse with fascinating irrespon¬ 
sibility. Now let me see—Yes, I think I’ve got the effect 
of the new dining room ; “ a yellowish paper ” (I don’t like 
“ yellowish ; ” it might be primrose or dandelion, apricot 
or peach, even cafe-au-lait or Bass’s Ale, but let that pass) 
and “ a light door.” Yes, but how light ? White, I can 
see ; but with the “ grey marble mantelpiece ”—Yes, it 
must be white if it must be light. I should prefer walnut 
stain for the woodwork, but my confidence in your taste is 
implicit. 

I want a whole lot of convincing that it’s wrong to do 
what gives you happiness—when it hurts no one. That’s 


51 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


the whole point. We must not hurt others to make holiday 
for ourselves. But I will never believe it is virtuous to 
suffer just for suffering’s sake. It recalls the old fable 
that the nastiest medicine is the most efficacious ; a Victorian 
fallacy, but potent with parents. No one knows what 
is in the soul of each of us and our knowledge of Right and 
Wrong—for ourself—is absolute. It is guided by the Spirit 
of Good that lives in us all, that Spirit that clamours for 
freedom and invariably attains it when the will is strong 
enough. Though selfishness is the real sin of the world, 
the root of all pain, one must be true to one’s own Self; 
none escapes the penalty for neglecting that. We have 
each a spiritual Individuality as well as a material Personality 
and we must keep it sweet and clean : each time we deny 
the inward conviction of what is really Truth—of what is 
Right for us , we sully it and that is the worst sin of all. 

Suicide is not always sin but it is nearly always cowardice 
—despair of living up to one’s ideal; and that is a passive 
crime almost as wicked as the active smirching of the Spirit. 
We are all at liberty to give to others what we will of service 
—of devotion ; our obligations are few and almost all 
material; matters of debtor and creditor ; but the Spirit 
is free, God-given, a sacred trust; to be returned, purified 
as far as may be, by the Thought that guards it from the 
dawn of understanding to the end. The great Peace lies 
in the realisation that there is only one best: loyalty to 
the ideal of one’s own soul, faith in the one Good that is 
absolute—that we call God, the One Thing Positive—like 
Light that is. Darkness, being negative, an absence, merely, 
of Light, is not. So, also, all opposition to one’s own ideal 
of Truth is negative—it doesn’t count—it doesn’t exist. 

This is as true in Art as in Nature. It applies equally 


52 


LETTER NUMBER TEN 


to our artistic ideal. What we can’t see in Painting, 
Architecture or Sculpture—hear in Music—feel, with our 
combined senses, in Drama for us is wrong. I speak as one 
typifying the average intelligence ; I refuse to set myself 
lower. And I—we—have no use for the dramatist who 
preaches at us. 

y Whoever has taught higher lessons in morality than 
Shakespeare, who never preaches ? Shaw does nothing 
else. Galsworthy is all bias. He tries not to take sides, 
but invariably his scales are weighted. It might be quite 
interesting to have a Propaganda Theatre ; but it is dis¬ 
honest to lure the public, under the pretence of amusing 
them, to see Mr. Shaw spitting venom against England 
and her social institutions or hear Mr. Galsworthy lecture 
on the moral obligations of Boards of Directors towards 
the families of their employees, or the effect of prison routine 
on the criminal. Charles Reade with It's Never too late to 
Mend did more for prison reform than Galsworthy’s Justice 
and entertained hundreds of thousands in the process. 
But his was a play. Strife and Justice are not; neither 
are they Truth for they do not argue their subjects without 
bias. They are special pleading in dramatic—and dog¬ 
matic—form ; premises, but no development. The writer 
postulates : “ These things happen. Isn’t it terrible ! ” 
and then drops the curtain. Strife is valuable propaganda 
for the encouragement of Class-hatred, no doubt; but the 
Theatre is not Tower Hill—yet! 

But the worst crime of all was to inoculate the English 
Theatre with that ulcerous toxin, Brieux’s Les Avaries. 
I refuse to refer to it by the disgusting catchpenny label 
put upon it as an appeal to a certain class of women and 
generally to the pornographically minded. The contempla- 


53 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


tion of ulcers, social or otherwise, is an unhealthy occupa¬ 
tion—for the layman—and I resent with all my being that 
unwholesome gynaecological lectures should be served up 
in stage-play form, labelled “ entertainment.’* Ibsen’s 
Ghosts has been cited as parallel but it is not. Ghosts 
is primarily a play and a very fine one at that; and whoever 
finds suggestion of obscenity in its performance must bring 
the evil with him to the theatre. It is none the less im¬ 
moral to produce and trade upon it from that point of view 
—to advertise it as “ banned by the Censor,” and to label 
it with that pernicious provocative to youthful inexperi¬ 
ence : “ For Adults only.” I would treat those who do 
this exactly as I would the German who poisons a well; 
and for him I can think of nothing cruel enough—not being 
myself a German. 

My ideal of a home makes you call me “ a romantic old 
sentimentalist.” Yes, I am sentimental in a way; I 
hope it is honest sentiment, not sentimentality. The 
language ought not to oblige us to use the same adjective 
for two totally different abstractions. I have sentiment 
about things and places and I consider it neither weak 
nor foolish. As for being romantic, the word used in con¬ 
junction with sentimentalist suggests to me the quintessence 
of pose—artificiality in excelsis —the lackadaisical ballad 
of the troubadour—the falutin of the Renaissance. I 
hate to see Romeo and Juliet set in that period ; the story, 
the characters—except Tybalt, who is a relict of the Renais¬ 
sance —are all Elizabethan, the period of action—of daring 
—of work. The panache of Cyrano—of Chicot—of D’Artag- 
nan is not the quality of a romantic ; they are virile, not 
mawkish, sloppy, sickly. Your romantic “ sighs like a 
furnace with a woeful ballad.” Flamboyance, brio , gusto 


54 


LETTER NUMBER TEN 


are male essentially ; they are not ridiculous because they 
are conscious of their humour. The romantic, if he laughs, 
laughs dismally; not because a mirthful heart bubbles 
to overflowing. If he became aware suddenly of his lack 
of the God-given sense he would instantly develop it to 
its widest and transmogrify in the glory of his sex—or 
expire of melancholia on the spot. 

You know Rostand’s Les Romanesques ; Per cine t and 
Sylvette are the romantics; but Straforel, the gorgeous 
Straforel! is no such puny thing. I do not claim to have 
his wit—his dash—his fertility of intellect and resource ; 
but at least I may claim to be of his spiritual inclining ; 
humbly I hobble after him and every chuckle he “ goguenar- 
diset ” (May I coin that ?) finds a sympathetic echo here. 
I have enjoyed the privilege of trying to play him—Alas ! 
only in English—if I failed, as was probable, it was not 
for want of sympathy and—may I claim it ?—comprehension. 
Please don’t call me romantic. 

But this word has also another sense : we speak of the 
young writers who in 1830-50 revolutionised the French 
Drama; I mean Victor Hugo, Alfred de Vigny, Theophile 
Gauthier, Hector Berlioz, Casimir Delavigne, Alexandre 
Dumas as “ the Romantics.” They founded a School of 
Drama that was to supersede the Classic of Corneille, Racine 
and their imitators, who, until that date, had been the sole 
purveyors, with Moliere, to the repertoire of the Theatre 
Frangais. Their model was undoubtedly Shakespeare ; 
and their heroes owe their origin to the Swashbucklers 
so dear to him and whom he has immortalised in Benedick, 
Mercutio, Petruchio, Gratiano, Faulconbridge, Antonio 
(the Sea-Captain) and others. These are romantics in 
another sense. There is nothing sawney about them. 


55 


E 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


English gives us “ sentiment ” and “ sentimentality ” 
and one adjective : “ sentimental.” 

French gives us “ roman ” and two adjectives “ roman - 
esque ” and “ romantique .” It amuses me to apply “ roman - 
esque ” to sentimentalism : “ romantique ” to sentiment. 

Chris has fixed up that engagement she hoped for. She 
leaves me to go on tour again in a fortnight. She will be 
happier in a modern comedy. 

Yours prosaically, 


50 


LETTER XI 


London 

1st September , 1918. 

When is a man old enough to kiss his niece in a public 
place ?—a restaurant, for example—anywhere, in fact, 
except a railway station. There, of course, indiscriminate 
kissing is permissible, even decorous, though not to my taste. 
I prefer to disappear before the train starts. To wave 
a handkerchief in aimless futility as the cars round the bend, 
while the engine belches black smoke and a shower of cinders, 
and to feel that every eye is upon you—that all the other 
idiots have switched off their several points of interest to 
concentrate on You—It makes one as self-conscious as the 
newly-wed, who, turning to wave the dutiful hand of connu¬ 
bial benediction to his blissful partner on the front-door 
step, collides with the lamp-post at the corner and thence¬ 
forward limps his crestfallen way to the next “ stops here 
by request.” 

But I wander. 

Chris has departed. I kissed her quite unself-consciously 
at Paddington. But this morning when we met for lunch 

at my little restaurant-1 am not in the least influenced by 

war-time license. Manners are manners ; they change, 
but there are certain fundamentals and no one has a right 
to obtrude his domestic relations upon the Public. Just 
as no man would be seen smoking a pipe in the street with 
a woman he respected. Chris smokes a cigarette after 
lunch—publicly. Well, I like an Egyptian myself with the 
coffee. If tobacco means to her what it means to me I am 
glad she should enjoy it. But don’t most women who 
smoke in public places do it simply in defiance and quite 


57 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


without enjoyment ? We shall be able to judge by the 
number we see smoking in the Tube in—say, six years time. 

And talking of restaurants and manners ; it seems to 
be the custom now for women to pay not only for luncheons, 
but for teas and taxis. Don’t you think it’s rather horrid ? 
Money transactions between members of the two sexes 
lead always to a wrong sort of familiarity ; but in the case 
of entertainment no transaction can take place. The 
man who escorts a woman is her host, he understands that, 
if he is a man, and is prepared for it. If he meets her casually 
and is not prepared he passes on ; but if he accompanies 
her he assumes the responsibility for her refreshment 
and means of transit. If she visits a shop he waits outside— 
unless it happens to be a glove or perfume shop, when he 
enters and pays. If these customs are changing I am 
grieved. I am glad I shall be gone before the new ones 
rule. Meanwhile Chris starts her new engagement to¬ 
morrow ; she has been rehearsing in town. 

By travelling up last night I am killing two birds, for 
I was able to see Chris off and meet a man, another who 
wants me to work on his play. I am to see him in the 
morning before I rejoin the Company. Our first week is 
over and the results were most satisfactory. Every one 
seems delighted with the play. Its future depends upon 
this week, when w r e shall face an entirely different type of 
audience. I can’t help feeling confident. The first and 
third Acts have pleased tremendously though the second 
hangs fire a bit. The last satisfies me, but the Author 
has an idea of substituting a sugary finish—and the backer 
backs him. 

Curious psychology of an audience that is satisfied if 
the curtain falls on a happy reunion, even though—as in 


58 


LETTER NUMBER ELEVEN 


the case of Pinero’s The Benefit of the Doubt —it must know 
that, did it remain up for another two minutes, the trouble 
must start all over again. One is reminded of Sir Peter 
and Lady Teazle who resolve that they will “ Never! 
Never ! Never ! Never ! Never quarrel again ! ” and two 
minutes later are at it hammer and tongs. How fine 
Winifred Emery was in that Pinero play ; the best thing 
she ever did. Well, our Author may be right, though I 
feel that any change must be, artistically, for the worse. 

I was unusually comfortable—for me !—on the first 
night. The words of a new part always worry me terribly. 
I know at least four excellent actors who can never do 
themselves justice at first because of this trouble with words, 
though I know others who no sooner read a part than they 
seem to know it. I can’t begin to memorise until I am quite 
certain of every thought to be expressed—every change of 
feeling and mood ; so that a part badly written or constructed 
needs sheer effort of parrot-like cramming. I think few 
people realise how an actor’s anxiety about words may, 
and often does, spoil his performance, not only on a first 
night but for a week and even more. And suppose he 
knows them so thoroughly that he can repeat them 
mechanically while thinking of other things—in my opinion 
a first essential to real ability in an impersonation—can he, 
during the short period usually given to rehearsals, master 
the other parts and the whole of the play so thoroughly 
as to be able to gauge the tempo and complete technical 
mechanism ? For the performance of a play is very like 
an unaccompanied opera, not a ballad-opera but the musie- 
drama of Wagner. Imagine a performance of Siegfried 
without a Conductor ! That is what the perfect perform¬ 
ance of a play amounts to ; all the changes of tone and pace 


59 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


must be nicely considered and rendered ; the duets, trios, 
quartettes and ensembles exactly and perfectly “ set ” 
and the audience—with whom the players have not rehearsed 
—is the orchestra : silent, yes, but playing its part all the 
same ; its emotions forming the accompaniment to every 

scene, and-But I was wrong, the Conductor is there ; 

the spirit of the Author, he who alone knows the exact 
effect to be produced. That is why an author should 
be always his own producer, but, if he delegates his job, 
that other becomes the Conductor and must sense exactly 
what emotions will be expressed by his orchestra (the 
audience) as accompaniment to his artists’ work and instruct 
them (the artists) in colour, tone, tempo , crescendo , diminuendo 
and rest as the Maestro does. 

In the times of the great actors, the Classic drama—there 
was not much great acting outside it—was studied from the 
earliest days. Hamlet had already played Laertes, Horatio, 
Rosencrantz and Francisco and probably several other 
parts as well; he knew every note, the tempo of every 
scene, in fact the whole score ; his conception was clear ; 
above all he knew what to avoid. Moreover he had played 
the Leads first at lesser provincial theatres ; then in the 
more important centres before, at last, he made his bid 
for the position that really mattered and so was able to 
present his finished best for analysis and judgment. First 
night judgment of our efforts in the present day is not only 
misleading, it is unjust. 


60 


LETTER XII 


London 

10 th September , 1918. 

One may draw safe deductions as to a man’s disposition 
from his conduct over food. Observe how he treats his 
roll and his napkin ; cast a glance at his plate as the waiter 
removes it and note his expression as the next course arrives. 
Watch him as he sips his wine ; that will tell you much, 
and the way he deals with coffee—Yes, I know you never 
touch it. Wise Redgie, for its degustation is most character- 
revealing. 

I lunched to-day with the prospective backer of our play ; 
hence these reflections. Business was entirely satisfactory 
last week and they are bent on a London production. I 
told you he regarded me with suspicion; he is inclined to 
question my method of book-keeping, and distrusts the 
negotiations I have already entered into on his behalf with 
a theatre manager. I don’t know what he suspects, but 
there is something in his mind; that I got before we had 
finished the fish. The trouble is he wants a theatre in 
Shaftesbury Avenue and that is out of the question. With 
the rumours of a possible Peace the boom is starting and 
theatres are at a premium. He doesn’t understand all 
the complications of London production and of running a 
theatre ; the ghastly expense that an ordinary business man 
may well be excused for regarding, in many cases, as very 
like blackmail. Who would be a manager! Upon my 
soul they have most of my sympathy. Details would 
only confuse you so I spare them. Sufficient to say all 
so far is muddle and complication. I am suspected of 
something vague and I have not the remotest conception 


61 



LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


of what it may be. Well, I am not worrying ; honesty 
often leads into a muddle—and even through it. 

I know you disapprove of my meddling with management. 
And in your last you say you consider it undignified for me 
to tinker other people’s plays and no doubt you are right, 
but I have to live somehow. Don’t answer me as La 
Rochefoucauld did the unnecessary person. It is a necessity 
because of Chris, I must die out of debt and she is my chief 
creditor ; so if I can’t get acting to do I must scrape an 
income some other how, consequently I turn to commercial 
use the only asset I have ; which is, so I persuade myself, 
a sense of the Theatre. 

It is no wonder managers don’t rush at me ; just con¬ 
sider : my first fifteen years were spent mostly on Drama and 
Standard plays, though I had good Modem Comedy 
experience, too, but mostly in outlandish places. But I 
always preferred the Romantic-Historical and would throw 
up (poor as I was) any engagement in modern clothes 
(mine weren’t, I couldn’t afford a tailor) to play in Costume. 
I have now, somewhere, my Hessian boots, cut out of 
American cloth, the conical Directoire hat, fashioned from 
an old topper; and the black velvet cape that transformed 
the second-hand frock coat into suitable equipment for— 
let us say—Beauseant. This name suggests: “ This 
castle hath a pleasant seat ” and reminds me of the various 
makeshifts we used to resort to for changes of tights : penny 
packets of many coloured dyes not then being on the 
market. But I will spare you the details. I played every¬ 
thing I could get in the Legitimate from Joseph Surface’s 
Servant to Hamlet, but never an effective part anywhere 
to matter. Othello at Yeovil is not much good commer¬ 
cially. Now I never heard of an actor making a position 


62 


LETTER NUMBER TWELVE 


after he was thirty-five and at that age I was nowhere. 
Then came an engagement to tour in the provinces with a 
brilliantly clever play which nevertheless did me an 
immense amount of harm. It was a very difficult and most 
unsympathetic part and in a town like—well, let us say— 
Birmingham, one paper would take the view that I was 
wonderful, bringing out all the objectionable characteristics 
with consummate art, etc. You know the sort of stuff 
they print. That would be in the Post , for example. The 
Mail would say I was hopeless, incompetent and thoroughly 
bad. In Liverpool the Courier took one view ; the Mercury 
the other. The Scotsman praised while The Glasgow Herald 
annihilated. The Company used to look forward to the 
joke each Tuesday morning and bet as to which view the 
leading paper of the town would take. But the effect 
for me was deadly and it opened my eyes. One printed 
damning wipes out a thousand enconiums (enconia!). 
Yes, it opened my eyes wide to a horrible inartistic truth. 
It’s all right to play Iago one night and Mercutio the next 
—besides Iago gets credit—if Othello lets him be seen— 
but even Iago (for an actor without a reputation) is, in my 
opinion, a tactical error for a run. Never play against 
the sympathy of your audience unless you are forced to by 
your need of bread and butter. That part did me no end 
of harm, no one (I mean manager) would believe I could 
do anything else and as a result I starved, literally, once 
more. If I remember rightly I couldn’t get a part for 
twenty-two months, and how I lived I can’t recall. 

It was then I took up tinkering, and through that, 
ultimately, a decent part. Then an old part in a revival 
and at last I succeeded in making a home; and I shall go 
on tinkering if that’s the only way I can keep it. But 


63 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


you’ll see, Drama will come in again—it’s wanted 
now—and Shakespeare ; and I shall be found useful, though 
no longer ornamental. Bearing out what I’ve said above ; 
I refused recently to play a German in a play that had quite 
a good run. I felt it would do me more harm than good 
in the end and that the next manager I applied to would 
say : “ No German in my new play ; ” as I know one said 
to a friend of mine : “ No Butler in our next production ; ” 
and to another man I know : “ Sorry, old chap, but there’s 
no Parson in this piece.” Even the critics help this damn¬ 
able method by praising, for example, O. B. Clarence for 
being 44 always so good as a curate.” Isn’t he good in 
other parts ? Look at his Starveling and his Sir Andrew. 
I should like to see him as Shallow and I’d risk casting 
him, and with confidence, as Fluellen. If you’re Roy 
By ford you must reconcile yourself to playing Old Weller 
or Bumble, but watch him if ever he gets a chance at Sir 
Toby or even Falstaff. I remember him as a provincial 
Heavy man in melodrama (so-called). He has been through 
it. He is an actor. He’s a heavy man still, though not 
in the same sense, for his twenty-three stone rather limit 
his range. You probably never heard of Billy Hill—talking 
of weight—the Baillie in Les Cloches de Corneville ; old 
Cattermole; and, above all, the hypochondriac in The 
Pickpocket. Oh, but he was so screamingly funny. He 
was an artist and a musician. Byford’s Cattermole, with 
all his breadth and unction, couldn’t compare with Hill’s. 
The Pickpocket by George Hawtrey reminds me of Charles. 
Dear old Hawtrey ! An evening with him is always a joy. 
I have seen The Naughty Wife; the others all forced the 
farcical note but he was content to play comedy. Ellis 
Jeffreys was polished as ever. She has one great charm ; 


64 


LETTER HUMBER TWELVE 


she smiles with her eyes. Irish, of course, but none the less 
attractive, or perhaps I should say all the more so, for Irish 
women, when they are charming, are very charming. Her 
method reminds me of the finished art of Rejane. Gladys 
Cooper grows very competent; each time I see her I feel 
more hope that here, at last, we may have a real Leading 
Lady ; Stanley Logan as the lover seemed to me to deprive 
the wife of all excuse even to contemplate naughtiness. 
Why is that problem, old, in its modern form, as Sardou’s 
Divorgons, always treated with bias ? Wouldn’t it be 
interesting to tackle it, for once, with all three characters 
behaving decently, and without any maudlin self-sacrifice ? 

When “ the little Alexandre ” invented The Eternal 
Triangle—it was not he who christened it—I doubt he 
foresaw the incalculable complications (whose legitimate sum 
is six) of which his subject was capable. “ II y a de bon 
manages , mais il n'y en a point des delicieux .” As we are 
all intent upon seeking les delices , even partners of a “ bon 
manage ” may find understanding for certain vagaries 
though they lose sympathy by indulging them. Monsieur 
remembers perhaps that “ les femmes qui aiment pardonnent 
plus aisement les grandes indiscretions que les petites infidelitez ” 
—and plunges accordingly. 

I wonder if Hawtrey ever considers how many good parts 
he owes to Dumas fils —and to Monseigneur le Due de La 
Rochefoucauld! 


65 


LETTER XIII 


Bournemouth 

15th September, 1918 . 

Lights out at 11, so with the assistance of a very con¬ 
venient little shaded lamp which I was glad to find in my 
room, I write in pencil and in bed. 

It’s pouring with rain and very close. 

I’ve been for a long walk by the sea, beyond Boscombe 
Pier, watching the effect of the firing that lit up all the sky 
over the Isle of Wight. I don’t feel like Theatre or Music 
Hall these evenings ; it amuses me to pretend I have nothing 
to do with the Stage—never have had. I am always proud 
of it; but in public conveyances or places where I feel I 
may encounter the sneer of ignorance or prejudice I never 
mention it. In this hotel no one suspects me. 

I am here to advise with another new author about his 
play. He is Italian and extraordinarily interesting—speaks 
English fluently but can’t write it. Of course you don’t 
really know a language until you can dream in it, therefore 
his attempts to express a rather complicated philosophy 
and illustrate it in dramatic form seem doomed to failure. 
I have explained this but he persists. I tell him the play 
will never be acted—that it is sheer waste to employ me, 
but he is determined. We have devised a method and to¬ 
morrow we start operations. His play is written in—well, 
yes, English words, but it is quite impossible to explain to 
you the queer use he has put them to. My job amounts 
practically to translation, so I am to translate and adapt 
while he stenographs ; but first I have to pull it all to pieces 
and reconstruct. I call myself a Play Doctor, or as one of 
my patients said last week, “ a nerve specialist of the 


66 


LETTER NUMBER THIRTEEN 


Drama.” This gives you plenty of scope if you wish to 
say something scathing. 

Really I have not much interest in these modern plays— 
either this, or the other I am shortly to produce. That is 
not what I went on the Stage for, but it would seem that 
the end I set out to gain has receded so far into the distance 
as to be beyond all attainment, even though I were as able 
as I once hoped to make myself. It may sound futile 
and merely ungenerous to say there is no acting now— 
besides it would not be true ; but certainly the thing it 
once was—the thing that attracted me—no longer exists 
and any attempt to revive it is regarded as disreputable. 
But you should have seen and heard the audiences in those 
days ; it would have done your heart good. It did mine, 
and filled me with a wild desire to provoke an audience to 
a like enthusiasm. Take for example Henry Neville’s 
exit as Charles Surface in Act IV. of The School for Scandal. 
The audience simply would not allow the play to proceed 
until he had returned and taken his call. Yes, in the 
middle of the Act! Most inartistic, eh ? True, it might 
have been, but not as he did it. He used to drop his hand¬ 
kerchief. That was his excuse to return ; he recovered it, 
bowing to Lady Teazle with that inimitable and graceful 
sweep of his that he only could carry off and which included 
the audience while it never seemed to take him out of the 
picture, and finally departed. I am positive that all our 
critics would shriek at this as most reprehensible. But 
the Public is there in the theatre to enjoy itself and if it 
wishes to thank the actor who has given it pleasure and 
encourage him to further effort, who shall gainsay it ? 
The same thing will happen in Act II. of David Garrick 
after the drunken scene if the actor C&li act it. The trouble 


67 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


is to get back to the atmosphere, but with Henry Neville’s 
little ruse—perhaps handed on from “ Gentleman ” Smith 
(the original Charles) for it may be traditional—the atmos¬ 
phere was not disturbed. Then there was Farren to preserve 
it; William Farren III, the only Sir Peter Teazle of my time ; 
Archer as Joseph and Ada Cavendish. It is monstrous 
that we have no School to preserve the Traditions of these 
Comedies—that to-day it is simply not possible to give an 
adequate reproduction of the method and business of one 
of our greatest art possessions, a thing that is unique : 
the Old English Comedy Manner and the business of the 
plays. It should have been handed on and kept alive as 
the Theatre Frangais preserves the traditions of the Moliere 
plays. Farren is gone ; but his son, William Farren IV, 
is still with us, almost the last link with the past. I could 
mention one or two more, but only one or two ! Yes, it 
is a lasting reproach to our Theatre that we cannot now 
adequately stage The School for Scandal , The Rivals , She 
Stoops to Conquer , The Country Girl and some half dozen 
more. I have seen other Sir Peters : Fernandez, quite 
unsuited ; Hermann Vezin, lacking resilience and humour ; 
Tree, striving as always to avoid tradition—succeeding, 
but giving nothing worth having in its place ; Lewis Ball, 
admirable, but essentially bourgeois ; many I prefer to forget 
and Henry Herbert, far better than most; but Farren was 
unapproachable. Frank Archer was quite wrong as Joseph 
—played him as a villain, as most do. I was guilty myself 
at the first attempt. Sheridan wrote Joseph for John Pal¬ 
mer, nicknamed “ Plausible Jack,” and there you have 
the key-note. Joseph must be plausible, smiling, oily, 
insinuating, but charming, or the balance is destroyed. 
Actors—or I suppose I should say producers nowadays— 


68 


LETTER NUMBER THIRTEEN 


seem to forget the play is a Comedy. I have only ever 
seen one Joseph who convinced me—and, certainly delighted 
his audience : Baliol Holloway, an excellent actor in nearly 
every thing. He’s acting all sorts of things at Tilbury 
now, but you’ll hear of him doing big work after the War. 
As Lady Teazle I have seen Ada Cavendish, Winifred Emery, 
Mrs. Bernard Beere, Mrs. Langtry, Kate Vaughan, Phyllis 
Terry, Marie Lohr and many others. None seemed to 
me right and Mrs. Patrick Campbell less right than any. 
Lady Teazle is a country girl; they all lose sight of that; 
she strives to be a woman of fashion but never succeeds, 
and fails utterly at last because her heart is touched. They 
will play the Screen Scene as drama. It is comedy which 
develops such a true ring of pathos that it charms to tears 
—which dissolve into a laugh. 

Played as drama Charles’ banter becomes intolerably 
bad manners. I have read criticisms that blamed the author 
for this, which showed that the writers were not qualified 
to judge the respective responsibility of Author and Actor— 
but very few of them are. The best Lady Teazle I ever saw 
was Dorothy Green. And Charles ; to my mind Henry 
Neville stands alone as Charles, and as Jack Absolute. 
None of the rest could touch him. And oh, the joy of 
Farren as Sir Anthony ! Both Forbes-Robertson andCharles 
Coghlan had the manner, but lacked the spirit of Charles, 
though I am told Coghlan had it in his young days. Mathe- 
son Lang and Robert Loraine did not attempt to catch 
the atmosphere of the period ; they walked through the part 
in their own personalities, as they might wear powder at 
a Fancy Ball. Waller was as bad as Jack Absolute. And 
when I think of Loraine as Bob Acres ! or Leonard Boyne 
as Sir Lucius and remember John Maclean—words fail 


69 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


me. Maclean was, 1 think, quite perfect—I can see and 
hear him now, reading the letter from his “ Dear Dalia,” 
—as he was also as Sir Oliver. Henry Neville as the old 
man—like Wyndham, he could never act an old man: I 
believe Charles Mathews was the same—had only that 
failing in the part; he could not be convincingly elderly. 

I have never seen a really good Bob Acres. 1 om Thorne 
was never a good actor. Lionel Brough was, at the time 
I saw him, too soaked in the methods of burlesque and 
O-pera bouffe to get all the effects legitimately; and I 
missed John S. Clarke—and Jefferson, said to be greatest 
of all. 

We have still one old actress who can play Mrs. Malaprop 
Mrs. Candour, Mrs. Hardcastle, and that is Claire Pauncefort 
(whose Mother I saw as Queen to Irving’s Hamlet). I 
won’t say she is quite as good as Mrs. Stirling but 
to-day there is none else, and she is better than any of 
yesterday’s. I prefer her to Mrs. Chippendale—especially as 
Mrs. Malaprop. Mrs. Billington was altogether too sour. 
Lottie Venne (as Mrs. Malaprop) was utterly miscast; 
brilliant as she is, her personality always triumphs over her 
art and her art is, in fact, to express her personality. 

Kate Vaughan as Lydia Languish and Kate Hardcastle 
was the best I remember in those parts. I offended her 
by saying I preferred her Lydia to any of her performances ; 
though it was hard pressed by her Peggy in The Country 
Girl. William Farren IV was a most excellent Moody 
and no doubt would be so still. But to think we have 
now lost it all—that it is gone for ever. Except Fred Terry 

there is none left who can even wear the clothes-Yes, 

one other: William Staveley, who might still instruct the 
younger generation how to bear themselves—to tie a cravat 


70 


LETTER NUMBER THIRTEEN 


—to take snuff—to manage “ the nice conduct of a clouded 
cane ”—and the appropriate flicking of a lace-edged 
kerchief. Kyrle Bellew was one of the old ones I have 
forgotten to name, the next best Charles and Jack to 
Neville ; and Marie Litton, of course, was exquisite ; though 
I was too young when I saw her to form so deliberate an 
opinion as I do of the others. Do not confuse Kyrle 
Bellew with the lady who has now, most unwarrantably, 
taken his name. It is as though I had called myself 
Adelaide Nielson. He, it w T as, who last played Claude 
Melnotte in the West End. For sixty years The Lady of 
Lyons held the stage, and properly played it is by no means 
dead yet—but can it be properly played now ? I doubt it. 
At the Adelphi it was treated all wrong. Lytton wrote it 
—designedly, I am sure—in a bombastic vein and in blank 
verse form, because he knew that as the best vehicle for 
the effect he visualised. It is not credible that he was very 
proud of it as poetry but he had every reason to be proud 
of producing a drama that has probably drawn more people 
to the theatre than any play, with the exceptions of Hamlet 
and East Lynne. When Kyrle Bellew and Mrs. Brown 
Potter played it they adopted a modern method; that is 
to say they did not act; they left all to the play, and it is 
not one that will act itself: some of it is mere bathos unless 
the actors treat it with art and enthusiasm when it is guar¬ 
anteed to carry the Public off their feet. But to-day 
one never sees or hears that, for the simple reason that 
the poor souls are never given the excuse. Wouldn’t 
they rejoice if they were allowed to be so moved, especially 
in these dark times. Let any actor be given the chance 
in some human play, and know how to take it, and the 
manager also will rejoice that he gave him the opportunity, 


71 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


for the public are ready to respond as generously as they 
have always done, and always will do when the right note 
is struck. * Acting is “ the thing ” for all that wrenching 
from Shakespeare’s context of the clichS about the play 
(vide Hamlet curtain on Act II). The play must be right, 
otherwise the part can’t be, and when I say “right” I don’t 
mean literary, but a good story, told simply, with the 
characterisation developed in action. And that reminds 
me of a debt we owe to Ibsen. He banished the Aside and 
the Soliloquy, by means of which, until his time, most 
dramatists developed nearly all character. We have 
rightly come to regard that method as intolerable—except 
in verse plays. 

By jove, do you know what the time is ? 

I must put out my light. 

Good night! 


72 


LETTER XIV 


Bournemouth 

23 rd September , 1918 . 

I don’t see why—just because there happens to be a war 
on—one should be awakened with a start to gaze on a 
chambermaid who looks like the great aunt of the fossilised 
Icthyosaurus in the British Museum ; her real name is 
Julia. It’s difficult to believe that kind hearts beat behind 
such grotesque physiognomies, or anywhere in their neigh¬ 
bourhood ; but the proof of the possibility is in the fact 
that Julia planted a hot water bottle for me last night, 
placed it surreptitiously just where I was bound to stub 
my toe on it. It was kindly meant and duly appreciated 
when the ebullient volubility induced by the stubbing had 
subsided, after duly emphatic expression. As it happened, 
though, the water bottle, welcome as it was, was less necessary 
than it might have been ; for after I had switched off the 
light and was groping my way to my couch some live ashes 
from my pipe fell on the carpet and mechanically I put 
my foot on them—I hope smoking in bed is not counted a 
vice—so both my feet got warmed. The blister on the 
P.S. is no more inconvenient than the bruise on the O.P. 
Many thanks for kind enquiries ! 

You may consider this all very frivolous, but if you’d 
spent hours trying to express in periods—more or less 
flowing, though yet with the colloquial touch—another man’s 
philosophy which you had first to digest and then adapt 
from its Latin expression, after having translated the gesture 
and disentangled the inspiration from the bunkum (and 
there’s a fair dose of both) you’ld understand the reaction 
that is leading slowly but surely to the disintegration of my 
reasoning apparatus. I grow moody and self-centred, no 


73 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


longer take kindly interest in my fellows. I have ceased 
to speculate as to which of the three ladies at the C. table 
it is who every evening plays The End of a Perfect Day 
as prelude to a pianoforte recital, which includes Rubenstein 
in F (played in the manner of the old-fashioned barrel- 
organ ; you can picture the monkey grinning), The Last 
Rose of Summer, The Blue Danube, Here we are Again and 
Where did you get that Hat ? It may be the fluffy-haired one 
with the elongated waist; or she of the washed-out complex¬ 
ion with the high shoulders; or the little snub-nosed brunette 
with the high-pitched giggle—I shall never know. The 
pale-faced man with the smoked glasses, which he occasion¬ 
ally removes to discover poached-egg eyes—overdone, that 
stare at nothing and derive no satisfaction from the pros¬ 
pect (I believe he uncovers merely to air them) no longer 
intrigues me. Even the waitress with such a prodigious 
squint that you can’t tell whether she’s thinking of the hors- 
d'oeuvres or the savory, no longer finds me speculating as 
to whether she is going to dive down the service passage 
opposite, or swoop to the table behind me, where feeds 
the pinch-nosed, bespectacled Nurse, who, with metallic 
tone and gleeful gloating, inflicts revolting reminiscence 
upon her meek, query-eyed and knotty-browed companion. 
I shall essay a monograph one day on the Healing Influence 
—and otherwise—of the personality of the nurse. Nor can 
I listen with my accustomed and judicial impartiality to 
my two neighbours who invariably hold post-mortems on 
last night’s Bridge. The little one with the blond moustache 
and the deprecating manner is so apologetic and deferential 
that I’m positive he’s a dark horse, and I choose him for 
my partner in preference to the bearded one with one 
watery eye and one monocle (eyes are very myopic it seems in 


74 


LETTER NUMBER FOURTEEN 


Bournemouth) a bass voice and a cocksure manner. 

I simply couldn’t keep this up. It is the severest test 
of my powers of concentration—never my strong point— 
that I ever endured. For nine and three-quarter hours 
yesterday I paced up and down the room and dictated a 
whole Act and smoked a whole box of matches in the process. 
There is another Act to do. My author has writer’s cramp 
and house-maid’s knee—in his elbow and I have parson’s 
throat and incipient softening of the brain. 

Forgive all this nonsense. My method seemed the only 
way to tackle the job, at any rate the quickest. Three 
Acts of the play are translated and reconstructed. 
One remains yet to be done and then I return to town. I 
am really interested now and don’t want to drop the 
thread until it is finished, so we shall work late to-night. 

I am discovered. 

An actor of my acquaintance accosted me before lunch 
in the lounge of this hostelry. He is one who remembers 
that I was a Super with him in the early days and forgets 
he was a Super with me ; for he is prosperous, Redgie, 
and prosperity has given him mental indigestion. He’s 
the sort that corners the oxygen,—talks everlastingly of 
his ability and his salary, and the disgusting part of it is— 
and this is where my envy, hatred and malice come in—he 
does earn a large salary and deserves it for he can act. 
He is unable to understand that I prefer the quiet of this 
place to the clatter of a more popular hotel. It is a failing 
of mine, I suppose, that though I enjoy observing the mass 
I detest to be of it. My friend is of those who plunge 
noisily into the mass and insist that it shall observe him. 
It does ; and that makes him perfectly happy. Still he 
can act, and for me that covers many sins—if the poor man 


75 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


has any except our besetting one of blatancy, and that 
mustn’t be counted a sin in these days or there won’t be found 
saints enough to judge the sinners. 

Was it always so ? I think not. 

The old actors lived apart but they were not blatant. It 
is said of us that we have no morals, the implication being 
that those we have are bad ; but for sheer dirtiness of mind 
commend me to the world outside the Theatre, especially 
that kind who try to hang on to it but don’t properly belong. 
I refer, of course, to the morals of the old actors ; the new 
ones are of irreproachable decorum, that goes without say¬ 
ing ; they are as moral as the society in which they scin¬ 
tillate—on the golf-course. 

But there are fashions, I suppose, even in morals. 

Or is it that we insist on larger license and then, to save 
our faces, invent a new moral code to endorse it ? 

Steam displaces horse-power and itself gives way to motor 
traction ; in everything the new fills the gap left by the 
passing of the old ; but in our business, no ! What passes 
leaves a blank. The lost is never replaced. 

This is tragic, for I am convinced that if the public of 
to-day could see The Bells , Rip Van Winkle (Planquette’s 
Opera), The Silver King , The Magistrate , The Harbour 
Lights , Drink , Sweet Lavender —to name only a few—done 
as they were originally, with Irving as Mathias ; Fred Leslie 
as Rip ; Barrett as Denver ; Cecil and Clayton as Poskett 
and Lukyn ; Terriss as Dave Kingsley ; Warner as Coupeau 
and Edward Terry as Dick Phenyl, each would create as 
great a furore as in the days of their production. 

Make no mistake : I do not ask for the revival of these 
plays ; in no case could it be satisfactory, the art of playing 
them is lost—dead as Rule Britannia ! 

76 


f 


LETTER XV 


London 

8th October , 1918. 

We are horribly congested with the Fair in Trafalgar 
Square, and a financial magnate of our world, said to be 
unable either to read or write, seeing the huge placards : 
“ BUY NATIONAL WAR LOAN ” is supposed to have 
remarked; “ Damn that fellow Charlie Cochran, he’s got 
ahead of me again ! ” 

But Lloyd George is a bigger booster than even Cochran, 
and a greater opportunist, which is saying a lot. But 
Cochran, for all his commercialism, has an artistic conscience 
and the other—well, he’s a great artist, I’ll allow. It has 
been said of our Celtic demagogue that he can “ charm a 
bird off a tree ; ” but when the bird has forsaken that 
friendly support it is liable to find itself with clipped wings, 
falling stone-like to earth. Our Welsh Wizard is all bluster 
and no fulfilment—impressive but never sincere, for he 
lacks principle and is guided merely by an intuitive sense 
of what his audience most wishes him to say. 

You tell me you had thought of poor Kate Vaughan as 
a burlesque artist of the old Gaiety days. It is true I 
should say that all who saw her then would never forget 
her dainty grace and she will ever live in my memory as I 
saw her in The Forty Thieves as Morgiana, “ morgiana- 
rally known as Morgy ” (Is that H. J. Byron or Robert 
Reece ?), but she had a long career in legitimate work 
afterwards, mostly in the provinces. She started manage¬ 
ment at the Opera Comique in partnership with George 
Edwardes in the Spring of 1888, I believe it was, and pro¬ 
duced The School for Scandal , The Rivals , She Stoops to 
Conquer (I think) and Masks and Faces (I know). Though 


77 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


not, properly speaking, an Old Comedy, this last play by 
Charles Reade and Tom Taylor almost deserves to be ; 
it must be acted with the same manners, for its period is 
about 1745. Kate Vaughan was charming as Peg Woffing¬ 
ton, but perhaps rather too delicate—too much like a Dresden 
china shepherdess. I saw Lady Bancroft—“ Mrs.” in 
those days—play it at the Haymarket and was conscious 
of some disappointment, though the production and the 
rest of the cast were superior to those at the Opera Comique. 
In that theatre I also saw Mrs. Bernard Beere as Peg, but 
found her miscast. Neither was I satisfied with that very 
clever actress Madge McIntosh in the part, nor with Wynne 
Matthison, who was temperamentally unsuited. From 
this you will perceive that, in my judgment, Peg requires 
very exceptional treatment. The large humanity strongly 
dashed with the spirit of roguery that characterises the part 
is apt to get lost in the Leading Lady attitude. Never 
was there a grateful and easy (in most respects) part that 
needed more real acting. Good as it is it simply won’t 
play itself. The play is full of good parts. As Sir Charles 
Pomander Forbes Robertson was ideal, with both Mrs. 
Bancroft and Kate Vaughan ; and I particularly remember 
the brilliant study of Colley Cibber, “ old beau—very curi¬ 
ous ! ” by Charles Brookfield. This part was played by 
Lionel Brough on more obviously comic lines at the Opera 
Comique. The two critics Snarl and Soaper and Mabel 
Vane seemed to me quite perfect at the Haymarket as 
played by Henry Kemble, Frank Wyatt and Eleanor 
Calhoun. But the great part, after Peg, is Triplet and 
never have I been quite satisfied with any I have seen. Of 
course I missed Ben Webster, but in my recollection Ban¬ 
croft was the best and, after him, I think came Brookfield, 


78 


LETTER NUMBER FIFTEEN 


who, however, lacked pathos—which you might say would 
put him out of Court altogether, but somehow it didn’t. 
Neither Fernandez, Neville nor Ben Greet could possibly 
look the dejected half-starved old actor, and the last of these 
clowned abominably. Fernandez was too hard and Neville 
too comfortable. This play was always a great favourite 
with me. 

Another real Old Comedy I am very fond of is The Road 
to Rain. Edward Compton included it in his repertoire ; 
also David Garrick , which is spurious Old Comedy. 

The first I saw at the Vaudeville but was not satisfied. 
Charles Warner, save for certain peculiarities, was an 
excellent Harry Dornton ; Lewis Ball (with Compton) as 
Old Dornton was one of the finest performances I can 
remember, an exquisite picture of paternal solicitude and 
pride. Goldfinch was, perhaps, the best thing Compton 
did, but his Manner—save in that part—was not the real 
thing. Even his Garrick—that cast-iron certainty—was 
unsatisfactory. His passion for decking himself with 
brooches, laces and ribbons savoured too much of Fancy 
Dress. One could never feel that he lived his period. But 
he made much money and from his Company came many 
accomplished actors ; yet as a School of Old Comedy it left 
much to be desired. Sidney Valentine won golden opinions 
for his Joseph Surface from the Press, but his performance 
was too heavy for my taste. David James, that most ex¬ 
cellent actor, was the Goldfinch at the Vaudeville, where 
also I saw Edward Righton play it, but did not care for 
him. But David James as Old Ingot with Wyndham— 
What a performance ! I can see him now ; every emotion, 
from astonishment, anger relenting into kindliness and 
parental pride and flooding into large-hearted generosity 


79 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


was plainly shown in his silent scene as the proud old vul¬ 
garian. William Farren III gave a totally different— 
rather acid and pinched—reading, but equally convincing 
if not so profoundly touching. Just because Garrick is 
such a safe part I have never seen one who entirely filled 
it. I missed Sothern; of Compton I have spoken ; even 
Wyndham disappointed me. I had seen him as Jack Rover 
in Wild Oats years before and questioned his Old Comedy 
touch. In that play I first saw Mary Moore ; quite charm¬ 
ing, indeed alluring, as the little Quaker. Blakeley was 
naturally grotesquely comic as the old Quaker, and David 
James ideal as the sailor, John Dory. 

When I think of Wyndham’s numberless triumphs in 
touch-and-go comedy and his perfect performances of the 
middle-aged raisonneur in numerous plays, I grieve to think 
that his fame rests chiefly upon what I regard as one of his 
least accomplishments. 

Another disappointment was Fred Leslie’s Garrick, 
played once for his benefit at the Gaiety. It was a single 
performance and therefore should not be severely judged, 
but I had grown so accustomed to find him brilliant in all 
he attempted that I was somewhat dashed, yet I still think 
him the best Garrick I have seen. I missed Irving as Dori- 
court and Ellen Terry as Letitia Hardy in The Belle's Strate - 
gem. I grieve there-for. I saw this play at the Court 
with Harcourt Williams and Leah Bateman and did not 
much care for it. Dumas’ Manage sous Louis Quinze , trans¬ 
lated by Sidney Grundy, as A Marriage of Convenience , 
needs the Old Comedy manner and Terriss played Monsieur 
le Comte to perfection. Waller did not compare with him. 
I did not admire Winifred Emery in this genre , either as 
Comtesse de Candale, Lydia Languish, or Miss Hoyden. 


80 


LETTER NUMBER FIFTEEN 


This takes me back to the Vaudeville and reminds me of 
Joseph's Sweetheart , Sophia , and Clarissa. H. B. Conway 
played Joseph Andrews, he was a very handsome man, but, 
as I remember him, not very talented. I don’t think this 
part called for much acting, however, and he was adequate. 
The best performance was Miss Vane’s Lady Booby. Tom 
Thorne was Parson Adams and not too happy in it. He was 
often monotonous and preached ; though at his best as 
Partridge in Sophia (a most grateful part), I thought him 
rather good. Kate Rorke played Sophia Western and was 
sweet, but she never appealed to me as did her sister Mary. 
But this play depended on Tom Jones. I saw three differ¬ 
ent actors in the part. Leonard Boyne was good but not 
striking. Charles Warner was better, but marred, as I 
always felt his performances in straight parts were, by 
certain peculiarities, notably a sort of bravura (if I may 
use a musical term) in his method of delivery that suggested 
affectation. But Charles Glenny was best, a really fine 
performance ; he gave us a kind of dunderheaded good 
humour that was at the same time both foolish and lovable. 
It touched humanity, one forgave and sympathised. Of 
Clarissa adapted by Robert Buchanan I remember little but 
the fact that Lovelace was an overwhelming part, the sort 
of part a young romantic actor longs for and that comes only 
to the favoured few. In it T. B. Thalberg made his first im¬ 
portant London appearance and despite certain natural graces 
and a charm of personality, failed, I consider, to do anything 
like justice to it. In recent years we have had Monsieur 
Beaucaire y w'hich, though a Powder play, belongs more to 
Romantic Drama than Old Comedy. I mention it because 
it is really a new version of The Lady of Lyons , which some¬ 
how has come to be classed with the Old Comedies. Though 


81 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


Beau Nash figures in it and the scene is set in Bath it has no 
atmosphere or sense of period in its writing : neither was 
there any attempt to secure them in the performance. The 
part of Beaucaire is what actors call very fat; it was pro¬ 
bably the best thing Lewis Waller did. Another play of 
the same type is The Scarlet Pimpernel, memorable for Fred 
Terry’s perfect Old Comedy Manner. He is the only actor 
of note, the last, except old Staveley, who has preserved it. 

No ; I am forgetting William Farren IV, whose great¬ 
grandfather was in the original cast of The School for Scandal 
at Drury Lane in 1777, and who is, no doubt, the only living 
soul who remembers all the traditions. I acted with him 
over thirty years ago ; a fact he has, no doubt, forgotten. 


82 


LETTER XVI 


London 

22nd October , 1918. 

Fearful uproar in the Club to-day. Tripe and onions 
provided for the coupon-less was under-cooked ; cottage 
pie (half coupon) was dried up ; whiskey sold out; beer 
not come in ; and, to crown all, the plum pudding announced 
on the menu proved to be plum tart—and very tart. I 
carry sugar in a bottle. I left the members “ tearing up 
the benches.” 

Which reminds me of the O.P. riots at Covent Garden, 
but we shall never know the Old Prices again. 

When I think of the paradise in which we existed before 
the War ! It cost nothing a week to live, we had no cares 
and no taxes ! Why can’t we know how happy we are 
when we are happy ? 

The true equality now is among those who eat together— 
it used to be drink. At one time we said : If I drink with 
a man w'e are friends, but that has been abused—owing, 
no doubt, to the quality of the liquor. If an Arab offered 
you salt and it turned out to be sulphate of soda you would 
infer that his designs were not honest. So I may feel 
about the man who offers me whiskey to-day, and as to 
beer—! 

But why must we have an expensive Controller with an 
expensive staff to fix the price of food ? The matter Of 
prices — of keeping them normal, that is—is really quite 
simple, a question entirely for the Police. All that is neces¬ 
sary is to make the laws more stringent against conspiracy. 

Listen while I expound :— 

There is beef for sale—precious little, I understand, but 
there is beef. I am not going to refer to the cost of rearing 


83 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


the cattle—what I shall say applies equally to that—but 
consider them as beef in the butcher’s hands. Now we 
are all concerned to get our beef as cheaply as possible and 
the Controller has been appointed to see that the butcher 
doesn’t swindle us—if he wasn’t appointed, as seems more 
probable, to give him and his office-ful of satellites jobs at 
our expense—but there is really no need of him, for observe 
Butcher A sells beef at an exorbitant price ; Butcher B. 
undersells A, but still pockets a big profit; Butcher C. 
undercuts B and gets a reasonable return. Naturally we 
all patronise Mr. C. But, you say, it would not happen 
thus ; they would all charge the exorbitant price exacted by 
A. But that isn’t human nature, nor is it in accordance 
with the Law of Economy; for, unless there be collusion, 
someone content to make a fair profit—fair to himself as 
to the consumer—always crops up to undersell the pro¬ 
fiteer and prices find their reasonable level. I say “ unless 
there is collusion,” a secret agreement between traders to 
keep the prices up. That is where the Law should step 
in. I would condemn with its utmost rigour—indeed 
with a terrifying ferocity—anyone proved guilty of conspir¬ 
ing with another to defraud a third party or the Public. 
Conspiracy is the dirtiest kind of cowardice ; but as our 
Laws stand they are positively incentive to conspiracy in 
scores of different forms and our hands are continually 
in our pockets shelling out to the conspirators. 

Take the little part of the world in which I live ; the das¬ 
tardly methods of Trades’ Unionism encouraged by the 
license the Law allows has persuaded our Actors’ Association 
to desire a share of such immunity from the penalties against 
conspiracy and wish to become a Union ; that is to say a 
menace, a bludgeon to coerce somebody—in this case it 


84 


LETTER NUMBER SIXTEEN 


can only be the managers. They wish to impose a minimum 
wage for the performance of something they cannot 
guarantee, in other words to put a premium on 
incompetence. 

The bricklayer used to lay from six to seven hundred 
bricks as a day’s wofk. Now his Union demands for him 
about 200 per cent, more wages for laying three hundred 
bricks and calls that a day’s work. 

So it will be in our business. Give anyone who chooses 
to call himself an actor a guaranteed minimum of three 
pounds a week and every one of lazy habits who may con¬ 
sider ours a jolly life w r ill crowd into the profession and 
bilk the manager as the bricklayer bilks the builder. If he 
happen to have fifty or a hundred pounds a year of his own 
it gives him splendid independence added to a minimum 
wage he has neither the training nor ability to earn; and 
soon the competent artist will be squeezed out by the crowd 
of half-fledged semi-novices eager to undersell him. It 
was years before I earned three pounds a week and if I 
wasn’t fully competent when I did get it at least I was 
experienced. 

But Trades’ Union principles; that is to say, rules that 
license conspiracy of one group against another—or 
against an individual—will never work in connection with 
an Art; the only thing they encourage is slacking. Imagine 
the Shop Steward supervising Rodin—or Liszt—or Sargent. 
It seems to me that those who propose to apply them to 
Acting are deliberately seeking to squeeze the last breath 
of Art out of our calling, weakened as it is by commercialism 
and the lack of guiding inspiration from a Chief, who, like 
Irving, has gained universal respect by his eminence as an 
artist and dignity as a man. That none has risen to take 


85 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


Irving’s place is the calamity from which we suffer to-day 
and which encourages these communist principles. 

The true aristocrat has ever been the true socialist. 

This sounds like a paradox, but it isn’t. 

From the moment the aristocrat becomes an oppressor 
he ceases to be an aristocrat, for he has lost Reverence for 
God’s creation, his fellow man, and without Reverence there 
cannot be Dignity, and lacking Dignity he cannot be the 
Best (a/ 0 £CTTO?). 

The aristocrat’s essential qualities are that he “ wipes 
away all tears ” and to his 44 own self ” is 41 true.” 

Does not the possessor of these two qualities sum up in 
himself all that is best in humanity ?— embrace and exem¬ 
plify all the highest tenets of Religion and Politics ? 

I think so. 

These two dicta of Christ and Shakespeare are the Way 
and the Light to human perfection. 

This is a sermon not a letter. Excuse it. 

I get carried away when there is question of the dignity 
of the Art I love. 

Yours, 

P.S.—Peace! 

Please , not yet!—though they say that Germany 
is crumbling internally and that an armistice may be ar¬ 
ranged in a month. Yet I cannot think they will accept 
what I am confidently informed is Foch’s 44 irreducible 
minimum ” without a long diplomatic struggle. One 
condition is that 150,000 men march to Berlin. 

I’ll drink red wine that day ! 

P.P.S.—Please get it firmly in your head—and in Marie’s 
—that ’flu is only a newspaper scare, for which some¬ 
one deserves prosecution. Of fifty cases, one doctor said, 


86 


LETTER NUMBER SIXTEEN 


only two were Influenza and forty-eight slight chill and 
nerves ! 

Think sickness and it shall surely visit you. Think 
health and your will for it shall create it. 

Thought rightly governed is a supreme force ; I learned 
that years ago. 

Christian Science, you say. 

But my Faith is not quite—or only—that. 

Christian Science to the many connotes Healing by Faith 
and nothing more. My interest in its precepts, in so far as 
I understand them, is aroused rather by what I consider its 
larger claims—not that I deny faith-healing. I believe, 
indeed, that there is no healing without faith. The medical 
faculty is prone to regard a patient as merely a body. 
Christian Science blunders equally in ignoring—in fact 
denying —even the existence of the body. But Christian 
Science, as the science of directing to its best use our 
consciousness of the Power of Good in all the traffic of 
existence—as the science of right thinking and just dealing, 
in short, as the theory of Christianity in active practice as a 
sound investment with gilt-edged security, appeals to me 
in spite of the fact that I do not expect it to save doctors’ 
fees or Life Insurance premiums. 


87 


o 


LETTER XVII 


London 

7 th November , 1918. 

To-day is historical, I suppose, or will be, but it leaves me 
with a dull sense of dissatisfaction. That prediction of 
which I wrote to you was too good to come true. My 
spirits are dashed. An armistice is to be declared within a 
few days. I cannot put into words my fear of what seems 
too hasty settlement. Once let the Germans get the Allies 
to talk round a table during an armistice and they, not we, 
will have won this War and within a few years will start 
preparing for the next. 

For all time the Germans will boast that they had the 
world against them yet no enemy set foot on the sacred 
soil of the Fatherland—and it will be true ! 

They were too wily to fight to a finish—to weaken them¬ 
selves so as not to be able to recuperate quicker than the 
Allies. Not a building, not a cabbage-patch of theirs has 
suffered ; but you’ll hear them squeal, if not in triumph then 
in hypocrisy—while France groans in anguish! But 
whether they beg, pray, laugh or whine never trust them. 
They don’t know the meaning of sincerity—never have and 
never will—their actions are lies like their words in the past, 
to-day and everlastingly. 

Put no faith in their Red Flag ; it is camouflage like their 
abuse of the White. 

That no more brave lives are to be spent is the sole—and 
enormous—compensation. Yet it does not compensate 
for the betrayal of that ideal for which already so many have 
been sacrificed. For the rest, I believe it will be found that 
we have achieved only ghastly failure. We have not even 
the parade of Victory. 


88 


LETTER NUMBER SEVENTEEN 


At 5 p.m. all who were in the Club stood and drank solemn¬ 
ly “ To the King ! ” To me it seemed a mockery. 

I can’t resist a certain feeling of admiration for the Boches, 
unclean as they are, for they possess the crowning virtue 
—if only it had something honest to crown—they are pa¬ 
triotic. Their slogan : “ Deutchland liber Alles ” does not 
bear the meaning we have chosen to give it. Our news¬ 
papers have made use of it, in their misinterpretation, to 
try and stir patriotic feeling here, as politicians use an 
election cry, such as 44 Chinese Slavery ” or some such non¬ 
sense. They have pretended it meant: 44 Germany 

must dominate other nations ! ” instead of interpreting 
its real sense : 44 In my German heart the Fatherland stands 
first! ” That is a noble sentiment and we as a nation 
should be the better for a spice of it. Who has no ideal of 
Patriotism—of Loyalty to his country—can have none for 
his town—nor his home—nor his family—nor his friends. 
He is a soulless clod. We have found him in these last 
years, fouling the air of England under his various aliases 
of Pacifist, Home Ruler, Conscientious Objector. No 
doubt he exists under different guises in other lands ; but 
that spirit does not flourish in Germany. It is true that, 
as I have said, their patriotism has nothing honest to crown ; 
a malign entity, cloaked in imperial purple, which soon may 
be a red rag (though I doubt it), but that cloak, whatever 
its texture or colour, will always swathe a potentiality, 
heartless and conscienceless ; calculating, cruel, fawning, 
obsequious and false ; a menace to all Peace and the ever¬ 
lasting Scourge of Humanity. 

I found Mrs. Silver snivelling. I asked why ? She said : 
“ Well, you see, sir, it isn’t victory.” 

I saw a Tommy snatch off his cap and drop-kick it. 


89 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


Insubordination ! 

It was inevitable. It will be the note throughout the 
Country. 

We’ve been done. 

Why, good heavens, Redgie, Chris used to wake up in her 
sleep ten years ago when there were fireworks at the White 
City—start up and cry : 44 Is it the Germans ? ” 

I knew it must come and so must thousands of others, 
the politicians included. I wonder how history will judge 
them. It is inconceivable that it will acquit them of 
responsibility for this appalling debacle. 

France knew. 

Whoever that thought for a moment could have doubted ? 
Surely one judges a nation as one does an individual: from 
a knowledge of his past it is impossible to avoid just deduc¬ 
tion as to his conduct in the future. 

Take that awful play of Barrie’s ; the most depressing 
thing I have ever witnessed in a theatre—not excepting 
the Lancashire Drama, such as Rutherford and Son , for 
example—look at the utter hopeless misery it exposes ; 
for all the artificiality of its sugary end, which the thinking 
mind refuses to accept. 

“ The fault, Dear Brutus, is not in our stars 
“ But in ourselves that we are underlings.” 

Just as Barrie drove home to us by analogy the devastating 
truth of his theory of Hopelessness ; so, by their conduct 
through the generations, have the Germans driven home 
to all who cared to observe the innate wickedness of their 
theory of Pan-Germanism. 

It is illogical, you say, for me to admire patriotism in 
the individual and yet condemn the same spirit when de 
veloped as the composite expression of a nation. But 


90 


LETTER NUMBER SEVENTEEN 


it is not their desire for supremacy I hate, but the unscrupu¬ 
lous means their tortuous mind invents to win it. 

But perhaps I take the Germans too seriously. Persons 
with no sense of humour should never be taken seriously ; 
it flatters their vanity. 

We were too serious at the Club when we drank to the 
King. 

The King is not serious—at least I hope the man is not; 
there is no question about the humour of his kingship. 

He wears the crown “ as an extinguisher,” as Chesterton 
said. It is true he said it of George the Third, not the Fifth, 
but there is probably more truth in it to-day since the 
passing of the Parliament Act. 

As for Germans, they are funny; but I noticed at school 
that the funny fool is usually vicious and a bully. All 
Europe has submitted to their bullying for nearly two 
centuries. I have no patience with “ Hang the Kaiser ! ” 
You can’t hang a spirit and it is the spirit of the whole 
nation that needs gibbeting. We tolerated the Arch¬ 
bully Frederick and alwaj^s since every little Deutscher has 
made him his model. I should be sorry for Fritz if he hadn’t 
got intellectual hydrophobia and every other filthy disease, 
mental as well as physical. 

The only way to deal out Justice to the Germans is to 
make them the bond-slaves of Europe for a hundred years, 
after first breaking their spirit by a military display ; the 
one thing they do understand. Then set them to clean out 
the sewers of the whole continent; reconstitute Poland ; 
get them hammering and riveting in every dockyard ; 
make them rebuild what they have destroyed—so much 
of it, that is, as is reconstructable; they can’t rebuild 
Louvain, the beauty of Dinant or Reims, for there is no 


91 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


reconstructing a desecrated fane any more than it is possible 
to destroy its spirit—they should work under Allied over¬ 
seers ; cut down their forests to give us the wood we need, 
while the whole population are put on army rations. They 
mustn’t develop industries that compete with ours, for 
we must have the advantage of finding them in boots 
and cloth, linen and food—except grain and cattle raised 
in their own land under our supervision—to be paid for by 
their labour ; and the inter-Allied debts should be liquidated 
immediately, as far as may be, by confiscation of the 
hoard at Spandau or wherever else they keep their loot. 

What does it matter what becomes of the Kaiser ? 
Above all the mistake of making him any kind of martyr 
must be avoided. His gibbet would be a monument, a 
rallying point, a fiery cross to stimulate their next attempt 
—for there will be a next; be sure of that. We are too 
squeamish to take measures to prevent it; too Germanised 
since William III (wasn’t it ?) brought German mercenaries 
here and let them propagate their filthy stock in our 
midst, and since we invited the Elector of Hanover to 
rule us. 

We imported their method of Education, instituted, in 
their case, for the specific purpose of controlling all opinion 
to the political end at Avhich they aimed, but disastrous 
here—as everything German has been always—for it has 
become a weapon in the hands of England-haters (financed, 
most probably, by Germany) to foment Class-hatred and 
disrupt the State. 

But why do I say all this ? 

One may hope for justice in a personal matter in an 
English Court of Law, but never for England in international 
politics. 


92 


LETTER NUMBER SEVENTEEN 


The idea of doing that play in London is abandoned. I 
am not sorry. Really the people were too trying. 

The new one of my Italian friend is revised and finished. 
I don’t think it will ever be acted. 

Why write it then ? 

Why does one strum the piano for hours without an audi¬ 
ence ? Why paint a picture that will never face criticism ? 
Why do you lounge there on your sofa by the window scrib¬ 
bling and never show me the result ? 

Because, though work for the sake of working is useless 
waste of time, work for the sake of the work is helpful— 
uplifting. 

Literary people are in sore straits ; I mean the rank 
and file. I know, not only by my own friends, but 
through the agencies for whom I do a little. 

As for the actors, like the farmers, they always complain. 
I suppose there are some bad farmers who could raise 
nothing even though they combined with farming the 
faculty of Clerk of the Weather. 

I won’t press the point of the suggestion or I may feel 
the prick. 


93 


LETTER XVIII. 


London 

24 th November, 1918. 

I have a letter from Chris. 

Can anyone else put your hat on for you ? Is it possible 
for another hand to adjust it with that nice precision that 
a touch of your own finger gives it ? I think not. Very well, 
then, who shall presume to settle our opinions for us ? 
—much more difficult, surely, to fit into our heads than 
hats on to them. 

I have always tried to remember that in offering advice 
or suggestions to Chris. I try never to dictate. I know that 
if I say so-and-so is, that she will take my word for it. But 
as Truth lies at the bottom of a well so very deep as to be 
almost unfathomable, I realise that I may never have reached 
it. No doubt she will outgrow this very demode deference 
to paternal dogma, but woe betide him who destroys her 
faith in me ! It is wicked to destroy a faith, even a mis¬ 
placed one. I wouldn’t take the responsibility. 

What does Chris say ? 

Truly, Redgie, I am more concerned with what she does 
not say. I smell a love affair. This is serious, though, of 
course, it must not be so treated, but it affords ample food 
for speculative thought. The gentleman must be seen—if 
I am not mistaken and there is a gentleman. There was 
once one who wasn’t. He had a certain glamour. Oh, 
yes, he was attractive in a way and Seventeen is not very 
discriminating; but he had no business to let his hair grow 
over his collar and into his eyes if he had a partiality for 
roast beef. That did him. There are not many excuses 
for overgrown hair and roast beef is the worst I can think 
of. Chris survived that disillusionment. But this time 


94 


LETTER NUMBER EIGHTEEN 


—I dread the lure of propinquity in an unfortunate hour, 
for, obviously, he is a member of the Company. 

Life is a very beautiful thing as it ought to be—as Seven¬ 
teen ought to live it.—simply, gaily, harming none, trusting 
all, but the simpler the soul the more easily deceived ; 
and yet, no ; purity makes no bargain, takes no precaution, 
it just looks Truth in the eyes without flinching. But— 
there is always a but. We have been so happy together 
that I grow nervous. Can it last ? I am not superstitious, 
but I never oppose a superstition, there may be something 
in it. Friendship is a sheet anchor and I have tried to make 
it ours. But (here it is) there must be other friendships ; 
one that will be bigger than all things. It will seem the 
same at first, but it won’t be real friendship. That must 
be based on equality ; friends must live on the same plane, 
see with equal eyes, discuss from an agreed stand-point 
and Sex is a positive barrier to that. Man and woman can 
never meet on an equality. Their relations must ever be 
much more or far less. It is because these relations have, 
for so long, been founded on deception—free, open and ack¬ 
nowledged very often, but none the less, for the time, at 
least, intended to deceive—that they have been, in the 
main, so unsatisfactory. 

The average man is rooted somewhere ; he develops, 
naturally, but research can discover his fundamentals. 
Woman is forever shifting her ground. When the two con¬ 
template a lasting relationship the girl’s thought is always : 
“ Shall I be happy ? ”—It is in life as it is in plays and 
books—never : “ Shall I make him happy ? ” Whereas the 
decent man’s thought is : “ Shall I make her happy ? ” 
and that unselfishness, if it could be mutual, would be the 
source of all true happiness in the marriage state. 


95 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


But nothing in the affairs of love must ever become a 
habit, nothing taken as a matter of course ; habits become 
shackles and love that is shackled grows restive and the irk 
engenders cancer. 

But I go too fast and too far. 

Chris’ affaire du cceur —if there be one—will evolve, no 
doubt, in the usual way—which she will be sure is unique 
and Father will play his usual role with what grace his 
fogeydom allows him. 

You see I contemplate surrender, which is tantamount 
to admitting defeat. I succumb to the common vice of Drift. 
We elect to drift and then blame the Universal Scheme 
because we have lost the individuality we have voluntarily 
relinquished. We are all talking now of the end of War, 
as though life were not a perpetual battle—armistice worse 
than defeat. Rest from strife is no less than decay. And 
this is as true mentally as it is physically : there is no “ rest¬ 
ing on the oars ” ; to stop pulling against it is to retro¬ 
gress with the current. 

Tell the Princess not to fear cows—nor to wander in strange 
pastures with her ferocious hound. Cows are constitu¬ 
tionally inquisitive though, if you read their eyes, you will 
perceive that their intentions are innocent: but they do 
not admire nervy maidens and they resent the aggressive 
canine. 

I am glad to hear of Marie’s engagement and congratulate 
her as I do her manager on his discernment. I trust the 
part may give her scope to prove to him that he has the 
best of whatever bargain he may have made with her : 
I shall look forward to seeing her in town and trust she will 
command if, in any way, I can serve her. 

Yes, I read Thoughts and After Thoughts and found it 


96 


LETTER NUMBER EIGHTEEN 


singularly unequal. Tree needed always a butt for his 
satire—an audience to applaud his wit. Though extra¬ 
ordinarily large-hearted and kindly in intimate relations, 
the presence of People always awoke in him the desire to 
shine—at no matter who’s expense. On being asked once 
his opinion of modern criticism, he replied : “I have no 
use for criticism, fulsome flattery is good enough for me.” 
This so exactly expresses the man that you might be dis¬ 
posed to consider it a yarn, but I heard him say it. 

I understand his inequality in the book. At first he 
would imagine an audience and score a few points happily ; 
but he had little imagination really and the absence of 
applause would paralyse him, he would grow lame—halt 
—flounder—and founder. In later years in producing a play 
he was bored stiff by the time he got to the first night. His 
joy was in the last week of rehearsals, when—in that 
cruel vein of his—he would score off some unfortunate 
supernumerary or actor who was afraid of him. I can 
recall examples. And so, in writing, I can imagine his 
interest trailing off in the absence of a sycophantic train 
to snigger at his “ hits.” 

I remember him stopping me once in the Haymarket, 
his arms full of newspapers. It was the morning after a 
production at His Majesty’s that had been a failure and he 
wanted my opinion of the opinions ; he wanted it, that is, 
only so far as it would flatter him. As we talked he per¬ 
ceived the approach of a notorious sycophant and had 
no further use for me. His pose of abstraction was really 
the excuse for an extraordinary lack of manners, though he 
could play the sycophant too upon occasion. 

I spent hours alone v r ith him in the Dome discussing the 
Drama of the Romantiques, Curiously, he had a great 


97 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


ambition to play Chicot, but could never find a convincing 
vehicle. He had a wonderful bust of Dumas in the Dome 
that I envied much. 

Yes ; we will talk of Tree and Coquelin, Phelps, Lemaitre, 
Du Maurier, Talma, Kean, Haw trey, Macready, Fechter, 
Irving and Melingue. 

I believe there is a boom coming in Shakespeare ; every¬ 
where one reads of it and hears it discussed. People go 
from all parts to the Old Vic. I saw Macbeth there last 
month. I was impressed by a girl who played Lennox. 
Ernest Milton was Macbeth, rather overweighted, but I 
liked some scenes, though I doubted the artistry of the 
“ adventitious aid ” he derived from a grey wig for the later 
acts. Lady Mac. I did not care for. The best performance 
I ever saw there was of King John. Russell Thorndike 
I thought particularly good ; especially in that wonderful 
last scene where the whole atmosphere was admirably 
impressive (Ben Greet produced). I preferred it to Tree’s 
production in which, with far greater advantages, it just 
didn’t come off. Waller was the Faulconbridge at His 
Majesty’s, but it was not as good as his Hotspur. Julia 
Neilson looked magnificent as Constance and was to a cer¬ 
tain degree impressive, but she lacked the Grand Manner. 
I was disappointed with Thorndike’s sister at the Vic. 
of whom I had heard so much. She was shrewish. 

I like your aphorism, Redgie: “So long as we don’t let 
Disappointment make us bitter it makes us better.” I 
copy it to help memorise it. 

It is true for all around us we see Success creating mental 
anaemia. 

Hardship brings out character to which nothing is so trying 
as prosperity. The truth is that character is formed 


98 


LETTER NUMBER EIGHTEEN 


by heredity, upbringing and association and the furnace 
of Experience either melts or tempers it according to its 
mettle. The blaze of Fame is more spiritually fierce than 
the crude flame of Failure ; only the purest native metal 
can withstand it. 

Your Archdeacon is a humorist—or a pig. I can’t 
believe your sense of humour failed, so he must be a pig. 
I understand his alarm if you were misinformed as to his 
intentions ; still I cannot think he wrote in dudgeon. Now, 
if he were a Catholic, I would swear he was laughing as he 
wrote : if he is Anglican he may have worn an ascetic smile : 
but if Orthodox, as I suppose, his pen was dipped in gall. 
So doubtless he is a pig. 

No one should be allowed in Holy Orders without a well 
developed sense of humour and a Consistory Court should 
hold annual session with powers illimitable as Star-Chamber 
to ensure it keeping up to scratch. 

Yours unusually, 


99 


LETTER XIX 


London 

4 th December , 1918. 

There is, I think, no word in the language employed so 
loosely as “ kind,” for it is used constantly with a 
significance it does not convey and but rarely in the sense 
it truly expresses. And curiously the word in general 
employment as its opposite has no relation to it—not even 
the negative one. Kindness is absorbed in love—is part 
of it, whereas unkindness is part of indifference. The ab¬ 
straction it postulates is too invertebrate to be part of any¬ 
thing active. You see, then, there can be no possible 
point of contact between them, for—like love and indiffer¬ 
ence—they are on different planes, love being an active 
force and indifference a jelly-fish. 

Friends and lovers are not “ kind,” for if their affection 
does not weigh more than that small part its sum is nothing. 

Acquaintances and enemies are not “ unkind,” for if 
their indifference or antagonism amount to no more it is 
negligible. 

In effect, then ; kindness is a dole we accept from an 
acquaintance, unkindness a pain we suffer from a friend. 

So, Redgie, please, when you write tell the Princess not 
to regard my respectful admiration as “ kindness ” ; it 
is she who dispenses benignity in her gracious acceptance 
of my service. 

She seems happy at the theatre, really interested in her 
part, anxious naturally, too good an artist to be over con¬ 
fident. It is not easy to strike the exact balance between 
confidence in technical ability and anxiety in regard to 
one’s power to express every shade of the conception. 
Nerves play their part ; they form the electric current 


100 


LETTER NUMBER NINETEEN 


which must be harnessed and used as an accessory ; if it 
take the lead its influence is fatal. She said she felt happy 
at rehearsal the other morning, but doubted her power 
to keep at the level then achieved. I told her that what 
you can do at rehearsal you can do before the Public, pro¬ 
bably not the first night, certainly not every night. Who 
can, who is worth salt ? 

The fact is Acting is not an intellectual accomplishment, 
it is instinctive; instinct guided by intelligence. The 
only intellectual part of it is the technical, which must 
be forgotten in performance. 

Did I tell you I had seen The Purple Mask ? I had read 
the original French play and therefore had a pretty good 
idea of what to expect, knowing how French plays are usually 
treated on the English Stage. 

A manager, it would seem, chooses a French play for 
certain of its qualities and then proceeds to eliminate them— 
to alter, not only the spirit, but the actual construction 
incident and character, and then wonders why it does not 
produce the same effect. This we have seen over and 
over again, especially in the adaptation of farces, where, 
indeed, the root idea generally makes them unsuitable 
for English consumption, yet the adapter will flirt with it 
to an extent just sufficient to shock certain sensibilities 
while tantalisingly tittilating others. Certain themes are 
best left alone ; emasculated they merely bore and trans¬ 
lated they are impossible—in fact they won’t translate. 
“ Mon Dieu ” does not mean “ My God ” ; often it means 
no more than the lift of an eyebrow, even “ Good gracious ! ” 
is too violent as an equivalent expletive. And so it is with 
many another expression which, literally rendered, shocks 
our more puritan senses. Rabelais in English is grossly 


101 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


offensive, in his own language his wit triumphs over his 
coarseness. 

Le Chevalier au Masque was one of those post-Revolution 
episodes, somewhat akin to The Scarlet Pimpernel , but 
far more ingenious in construction, treated with a light 
but very firm touch and requiring perfect Manner and bal¬ 
ance in the acting. Matheson Lang (for whom it has been 
adapted as The Purple Mask) swamps it. He has elaborated 
his own part by sundry devices which do not add to the 
effect and strolls through situations which need tensity and 
alertness as though the whole thing bored him. But his 
worst offence is in cutting the last act entirely and giving 
us instead a new one which is commonplace in the extreme. 
In the original last act Napoleon appears and at once becomes 
the dominant figure. It was, perhaps, too much to expect 
an actor of Lang’s popularity to tolerate such interference 
with his position as a Star ; so in the English version 
Napoleon is eliminated ; and with him goes all the freshness 
and originality of the denouement. 

What an inexhaustible mine of inspiration the arresting 
figure of the great Buonaparte. You can’t have seen Rejane 
in Madame Sans-G&ne. You missed a great performance. 
It was my first experience of her and I never saw her to 
greater advantage. Irving produced a translation of the 
play for Ellen Terry, but, admirable as she was, she did 
not compare with the French woman. 

Irving was too tall for Napoleon yet he contrived a 
wonderful impersonation. All the furniture was made 
higher, the door handles were raised and the lower panels 
exaggerated in order to dwarf his figure and he surrounded 
himself with all the tallest actors he could find. It was a 
tour de force , but not one to rank with his great performances. 


102 


LETTER NUMBER NINETEEN 


I was much disappointed with the Frenchman who played 
with Rejane ; Duquesne, I think his name was. 

Murray Carson in A Royal Divorce was undoubtedly the 
best Napoleon I have seen, he gave us fine insight to the 
mentality of the man as well as a perfect picture. Hermann 
Vezin I also saw in the same play but he was not suited. 
A. E. George was unimpressive as the Little Corporal in a 
very weak drama founded on the delightful Brigadier 
Gerard stories. A fine play might have been written on 
that subject had an attempt been made to capture the 
atmosphere of the whole book instead of relying upon one 
not very interesting episode. Hare was disappointing as 
Napoleon in The Great Conspiracy , neither his appearance 
nor method lent itself to the impersonation. 

It is strange that Dumas did not succeed in making a 
good play on the great man ; he spread his effort over too 
large a canvas, but there are fine scenes in his Napoleon 
which have been stolen with good effect by many writers, 
French and English. 

Of the actors of the past generation Harry Jackson, that 
most excellent Comedian, was celebrated for his imper¬ 
sonation of Napoleon. Another was Gomersal, of whom a 
good story (one of many) is told. He was proprietor of 
the theatre at Worcester and an actor asking one night 
for free admission, the following conversation took place : 

Gomersal: What line ? 

Actor : Second Low Com. 

Gomersal: “ Is she to be buried in Christian burial that 
wilfully seeks her own salvation ? ” 

Actor : “ I tell thee she is, and therefore make her 

grave straight.” 

Gomersal: Pass One ! 


103 


H 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


After lunch I go to Hampstead to see an author on a 
reconstruction I have recommended. The subject may 
interest you. I knew it was wrong dramatically but I 
could not see where it was wrong psychologically, for, 
depend upon it, if your play lacks dramatic crescendo you 
have not handled the psychology of your characters with 
true dramatic insight. The story concerns spiritualism 
and reincarnation and is treated with quite exceptional 
ability. The question is : whether a sudden revelation or 
dread of the intangible is the more demoralising influence ? 
I think you must agree with me in deciding for the latter. 
Then, when revelation comes—when terror culminates in 
confirmation—the victim is driven to the decisive step that 
hastens the catastrophe. It seems so simple when the 
flaw is found and one wonders how it was possible to over¬ 
look it at the first. I have consequently recommended 
opening the play with Act III and putting Act I in its place. 
You’ll say it is just like me to turn the thing topsy-turvey. 

Perhaps you’re right. 


104 


LETTER XX 


London 

23rd December , 1918. 

“ 1669, July 11th. To the King’s Playhouse, to see an old 
play acted of Shirley’s called Hyde Park , the first acted with 
horses ; an excellent epilogue spoken by Beck Marshall, 
the first female actress that appeared on the stage.” 

Pepys from Old Drury Lane. 

I had always thought of the respectable Miss Saunderson, 
who became the wife of the respected Betterton, the first 
“female actress.” I must enquire into the subject of Beck 
Marshall, but she is not my excuse for quoting the above. 

“ The first acted with horses ! ” 

Have you ever ridden a horse on the stage, Redgie ? 
Of course you haven’t, but warn Marie never to attempt it. 
Apart from the fact that—except perhaps at Drury Lane, 
Covent Garden or the Lyceum—a horse looks ridiculous, 
for it upsets all the perspective of the scenery, dwarfs 
everything and destroys its own effect by being too real, 
the poor beast suffers a martyrdom of nerves because of the 
hollowness it senses beneath its hoofs. Then a horse, 
you see, is a bad actor, he can play only one part; himself 
—though to-day that is counted the highest art, so we may 
be prepared for a return to the Equestrian Drama. 

I have had curious experiences in the saddle and even 
riding bare-back on the stage, for I have toured in two 
plays that necessitated the hire of a different horse each week 
and they ranged from the retired cab-horse to the high- 
stepping charger. Astride the former I have been jeered 
at by the Gallery ; and cheered for a daring I did not possess 
for keeping my seat on the latter, when two hundred supers, 
scene-shifters and company fled and the orchestra flung 


105 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


down their instruments and leaped into the Pit (it was a 
popular theatre without Stalls) after my mount had scared 
every soul off the stage, crashed through the scenery and 
finished with his near hind leg wedged in a star-trap. 

The Gallery’s joy was boundless ; the Pit’s enthusiasm was 
tempered by anxiety as to whether I had horsemanship 
sufficient to dissuade the beast from treating the orchestra- 
well as the water-jump. The act-drop finally descended 
and the old-fashioned roller struck my shoulder as it fell 
—though I did not ! A friend assured me after that had I 
known my danger I should have been scared out of my life. 
I take no credit for the exploit in which happy ignorance was 
my salvation. 

On another occasion—I was riding bare-back this time 
—I found a bucker, and myself precariously near the flies 
and subsequently between the four hoofs of my rocking 
horse ; patient and docile, mercifully, when he had unloaded 
me. One regarded these cheery episodes as part of one’s 
early training. 

But to tell you of them was not my reason for the ques¬ 
tion, but because Christmas makes me think of Astley’s, 
that dear old wonderful theatre that was in Westminster 
Bridge Road, and a visit to which was once among the 
proudest of my joys. 

It was a huge place with a circus ring where usually are 
the Stalls and Pit, and the performance began with eques¬ 
trian Turns. In the interval the apron of the stage w r as 
lowered into the ring and the entertainment continued 
behind the footlights, with horses, of course, taking part 
in the Pantomime or Play. The Pantomimes I can’t recall, 
though I saw many ; my joy w'as in the dramas, especially 
Mazeppa and Lady Godiva. 


106 


LETTER NUMBER TWENTY 


I don’t remember Adah Isaacs Menken, the celebrated 
Mazeppa, though I heard of her from my father ; but I 
saw Maud Forrester in both these plays, a lady of ample 
proportions quite unlike the youthful Mazeppa, but, strapped 
to the back of the wild courser, thundering up a succession 
of raking-pieces, an inspiring spectacle to inflammable 
youth. I suspect that to-day she would scarcely satisfy 
as the modest Godiva, but I thought her very beautiful 
then—as doubtless she was. 

There is a story told of a stage horse that was ridden by 
both Irving and Tree—But, no ; on second thoughts, I will 
not set it down, though I might not shame to tell it. One’s 
tongue is less easily soiled than one’s pen. 

Why does the mention of Astley’s recall the old Aquarium 
at Westminster ? Because both are gone, I suppose, and 
there is nothing to-day of either sort in the world of amuse¬ 
ment. 

I remember Zazel, the lady who, after doing her perform¬ 
ance on the slack wire, was fired nightly from the mouth 
of a cannon. She was extraordinarily graceful and pretty 
and was a great attraction to what were known as the Crutch 
and Tooth-pick Brigade, precursors of the Monocled 
Mashers who to-day are succeeded by the Knuts. Farini, who 
introduced Zazel, was a great showman, and his 
protegee became the sensation of the London Season 
of 1877. 

Blondin I never saw, but Ethardo, who ascended the 
Spiral balancing on a globe, I remember at the Aquarium, 
a dark bearded man wearing a blue and white leotard, his 
whole aspect and bearing giving a weight and impressive¬ 
ness to what was really no more than the ordinary Act of 
the professional acrobat. But he knew the value of speeialis- 


107 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


ing ; like Harley Street, he realised that the fees increase 
in the same ratio as the proffered service is limited. 

Ethardo was a link with Cremorne Gardens, where, as 
I heard in my youth, a man who tried the same feat on a 
bicycle and lost his life in the attempt, was hooted by the 
crowd. 

I have distinct recollection of the adventurer, who, 
ascending from Cremorne attached to the car of a balloon, 
undertook to fly to earth. Mistaking his signal, his con¬ 
federates in the car released him too soon, and the huge 
wings, upon which he was relying to float him to the ground 
with gentle revolutions, not being properly in motion, he 
toppled, headlong and hurtling—I saw him falling—and 
was impaled upon an ornamental spike, part of the decora¬ 
tion of a shop-front in the King’s Road, Chelsea. His 
wings of oiled silk were shattered and I saw children in the 
street gathering the fragments as ghastly souvenirs. 

At the Aquarium I first heard Jenny Hill, the Vital 
Spark. Well she deserved the sobriquet. Her rendering of 
her two famous songs Good Boy ’Arry and Princess 
Yucalulaloo was art of a very high order. She was indeed 
a dynamo, an electric personality, yet neither restless nor 
boisterous. 

Concerts there were at the Aquarium where I heard many 
of the best singers ; in fact it combined, as a place of amuse¬ 
ment, all the most entertaining qualities of the Coliseum with 
the freedom and spaciousness of the Earl’s Court Exhibitions, 
which superseded it; destined in their turn to be ousted ‘from 
popular favour by the attractions of the White City. 

We have had, occasionally, something of the atmosphere 
of the Aquarium at Olympia when it has been used for a 
Fair or Circus, but Olympia was never so cosy or so gay as 


108 


LETTER NUMBER TWENTY 


the Aquarium at its best; it is too vast, a perfect arena for 
displays, such as the Military Tournament, held in my young 
days at the Agricultural Hall. 

The Aquarium would suit my mood to-night, to take 
my coffee and cigar there, listen to Jenny Hill, hear Macder- 
mott sing We don't want to fight , hut, by Jingo , if we do ! 
split my sides over the gags and knockabout business of 
The Two Macs or the never-failing humour of Sweeney and 
Ryland and then watch black-bearded Farini—who might 
have been Du Maurier’s model for Svengali—as with pom¬ 
pous and portentous preliminary he introduced the dazzling 
Zazel. 

Ghosts, all of them !—dead as Marley. 

Must I play Scrooge this Christmas, Scrooge before his 
regeneration ? No; I envy no man his having; solely 
I envy the gifts Fortune might have bestowed, but with¬ 
holds, doubtless by reason of my undeserving. 

Chris is in Yorkshire and I am alone. 

Marie was with you yesterday, I expect; her rehearsals 
suspended until Friday. 

I am at a loose end. 

“ The rain it raineth every day.” 

Slippers and an armchair before the fire are not rest 
when the brain is en garde. I have not, like you, the great 
art of doing nothing gracefully. 

Mrs. Silver is stoning raisins for a pudding ; but Christmas 
pudding is not amusing without the sauce of children’s 
laughter ; yet, much as I love to see and hear them, children 
make me more self-conscious than the rising curtain on a 
first night. 

I miss my Mother, Redgie ? Aren’t I an old fool ? Poor 
Mother ! When I lost her ambition for me——Oh, she didn’t 


109 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


know, bless her ! I mean she was no sort of judge of Art, 
but she thought her goose a particularly fine swan and it 
did help. 

I can’t make up my mind whether to spend the evening 
reading Emerson or Monte Cristo. 


\ 


no 


LETTER XXI 


London 

315 / December , 1918 . 

“Joy gentle friend! Joy and fresh days of love 
“ Accompany your heart! ” 

Thanks, Redgie, many and sincere, for the Shakespeare 
Calendar. Each day as I tear off yesterday and discover 
some new and yet familiar gem of wisdom, wit, or keen 
analysis, I shall think of you and thank the good Dumas for 
guiding my steps toward such knowledge as I have of Sweet 
Will. 

It is many years since I have been without my Shakespeare 
Calendar, but I am doubly glad to owe this year’s to you, 
for it has been with you that I have discussed him more, 
and, in discussion, learned to know him better, than with 
any single soul I ever met. Some of his daily messages 
will seem most strangely inappropriate, yet I have known the 
day that brought weirdly unexpected fulfilment of the thing 
he seemed to prophesy ; some will seem checks, corrections, 
warnings, reproofs and even castigations ; and some will 
speak with a most strange directness, as from uncanny 
knowledge of my inmost self. But all is Truth, despite the 
efforts of those, who, by divorcing phrase or verse from its 
context, strive to warp his meaning. 

And Shakespeare was an Actor! 

To hell with the theories of Ignatius Donnelly and his 
cryptogram and all the Baconian crew and others who would 
rob our calling of its crowning glory : that an Actor did 
indeed give to humanity its greatest literary possession. 

Let them disprove that claim before they dare to strip 
a single frond from the feather of his quill or a petal from the 


ill 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


laurel of his crown, ay—or a spark from the glory of his 
nimbus. 

Listen while I read an old letter, written by one Peele 
to Marie, his friend :— 

“ We were all verye merrye at the Globe, where Ned 
x\lleyn did not scruple to affirme pleasantly to thy friend 
Will that he had stolen the speeches about the qualityes 
of an Actor’s excellencye in Hamlet from conversations 
manyfold which had passed between them and opinions 
given by Alleyn touching the subject. Shakespeare did 
not take this tale in good sorte ; but Jonson put an end to 
the strife by wisely remarking : “ This needs no contention, 
Ned, you stole no doubt. Do not marvel, have you not 
seen him acte times out of number ?” 

Believe me, yours sincerely, 

4 G. Peele.’ 

I find here two points of enormous interest and though 
one may reflect upon a very human weakness in Will, the 
other does very positively support his claim, or rather 
that which his lovers make for him. 

“ Shakespeare did not take this tale in good sorte.” 

Picture that scene at the Globe. Like Goldsmith, 
who preferred to write his replies to the satirical shafts of 
his friend, Doctor Johnson, Will did not find the apt retort 
to sprightly Ned’s friendly banter ready on his tongue ; 
not that he was affected, as was Goldsmith, with a stuttering 
utterance. His sense of humour, you see, was a little 
under the weather ; in such mood even the wittiest may 
fail of courage to press a friendly quarrel to the Seventh 
Cause of Touchstone. I love him all the better for his human 
weakness and I will not credit Ned with venomous intent 
in his “ pleasant affirmation ” of the alleged theft. 


112 


LETTER NUMBER TWENTY-ONE 


Then we have wise Ben Jonson rallying the pair. “ If 
Will stole from Ned ; ” he says in effect, “ Ned also stole.” 
And Will—? Like Moliere—like every true artist-dramatist 
—il prendrait ses biens oil il les en trouve —in Nature—in 

Truth. 

But you will have noted that the alleged theft, as treated 
by both Ned and Ben, is but added confirmation, if such 
were needed, to the undisputed fact (accepted by those who 
knew him intimately) that Will did indeed write the play ; 
and therein lies my interest in the good Peele’s letter. 

Good health to you, my Rcdgie, and to your dear ones. 
I wish you heartily the love of friends and kindness (if 
you will have it) of acquaintances ; understanding and 
quick service ; the wit to make and the courage to grasp 
opportunity ; joy in achievement and freedom from petty 
worries. May all these serve to ease the path of 1919. 

Yours paternally, 


* 


ns 


LETTER XXII 


London 

14 th January , 1919. 

When I read that D’Artagnan had “an eye wide-open and 
intelligent ” and 44 abnormal development of the maxillary 
muscles ” I felt a certain vagueness—a sense that I was 
missing something. 44 Maxillary ” is a worrying word ; 
it is not certain whether it refers to the upper or lower jaw. 
Boy-like I had scamped the introductory passages, eager 
to get at the story, but as I thought over the whole on a 
second reading, I knew that I was losing enormously in 
what Stevenson calls—in regard to this very book—“the 
blackguardly travesty of translation.” I determined 
to get the true colour from the original. I had little French 
and not much Latin, but the “ not much ” helped the 44 little” 
and by aid of the French-English of the good Smith it did 
not take so very long to master the first volume. By the 
time I had finished the eleventh ; wept for the death of 
Porthos—as did Dumas himself, who relates how his grief 
drove him to strike work for the day and go to bed entirely 
overcome. His son, Alexandre, visiting him and much 
concerned, enquiring the cause ; 44 1 have killed Porthos,” 
said Dumas, weeping copiously—grieved for the subsidence 
of the noble Athos and spent a sigh for Aramis—though I 
could not endorse D’Artagnan’s dying lament: 44 Athos y 
Porthos, au revoir, Aramis a jamais adieu! ”—and had bidden 
a last farewell to the valiant Gascon himself, I found myself 
fairly competent to tackle any of my author’s works and 
proceeded to devour them voraciously. 

I could spend hours discussing the great Trilogy,* which 
I don’t doubt you know even better than I, and of course, 

* Les Trois Mousquetaires, Yingt Ans apres, It* Vicomte dc Bragelonne. 


1X4 



LETTER NUMBER TWENTY-TWO 


you know Stevenson’s appreciation : “ What novel has such 
epic variety and nobility of incident—good sense, gaiety 
and wit—unflagged literary skill, or more wholesome 
morality ? ” 

It would be sheer joy to me to talk of the love story 
of Diane de Monsoreau and the brave de Bussy—of the 
exploits of Henri de Navarre—of Pedro the Cruel—of the 
Chevalier D’Harmental—of the Companions of Jehu—of 
Sylvandire—of Fabien and Louis dei Franehi, the Chevalier 
de Maison-Rouge, Ange Pitou and Cagliostro—of Henri 
de Guise, Catharine de Medicis, la Mole and Coconnas, 
Nanon, Canolles, Madame de Cambes, Diane de Poictiers 
and Benvenuto Cellini—of the relentless Edmond Dantes, 
the glorious Chicot and the superb Gorenflot; but all this 
would not be to answer your question : how it happened 
that “ the Ventripotent Mulatto ” taught me to love 
Shakespeare. 

At school I had watched my elders play Henry IV , Part 
/, Henry V. and Macbeth , and in all the leading parts my 
favourite master, he of the rusty thread-bare gown and 
battered mortar-board ; I think he was as poor as I know he 
was good and as wise as kindly. I recall the day when I 
stood before him, struggling with the Rule of Three, and he 
discovered on the reverse of my slate the legend “ Down with 
the Liberals ! ” and without a word took it to the other end 
of the great class-room, w here the ferocious and red-bearded 
Walker was instructing the Fourth in Algebra. As Edmonds 
held it out to him, pointing at me, Walker spluttered and 
his watery blue eye lit balefully upon me. I don’t think he 
ever forgave me ; but Edmonds and I were friends from that 
moment. A grave ox-eyed man, w ith a rare smile which 
on occasions shone through his shabbiness like a May morn- 


115 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


ing in the Caledonian Road. The boys adored him 
but whispered at his approach, the tragedy they 
sensed about him awed them, but the honesty in his eyes 
reassured. 

But my point—Of course ; Edmonds played Falstaff, I 
remember it well and how I loved it—Henry V. in w'hich he 
did not convince me (How was it possible ? Those eyes ! 
That beard !) and Macbeth. I have lost the impression of 
the last but he could not have been right. I remember 
better the farces and burlesques that completed the pro¬ 
grammes. Edmonds was a comedian—or might have been 
but for the mortar-board. The day came when I was cast 
for some small part in The Merchant of Venice, I forget which; 
Balthazar I expect, or Salarino ; but no matter. All this 
had not taught me to love Shakespeare, but merely given 
me the desire to act—something—anything with passion 
or emotion in it. 

The time came when I was working in that city office and 
although I lodged in Bloomsbury, I used to wander home 
always by Fleet Street and the Strand, and above all I 
loved the old book and print shops in Holywell Street. It 
was there I bought for a few pence my second-hand copies 
of Dumas. 

It was his wonderful essay on Othello that first taught 
me the truth ; I have read it-Oh, how many times. 

Dumas had seen Kemble, Kean and Macready as the Moor, 
as well as Talma and Joanny. He describes their different 
methods, but he describes best the marvel of Shakespeare’s 
genius. 

He tells, unknowingly, how Burbage must have played 
the part. 

Burbage ! What that name has come to mean to me ! 


116 


LETTER NUMBER TWENTY-TWO 


Burbage and Melingue! The two greatest actors, 
I think, that ever lived. 

The Englishman, wide-eyed (like D’Artagnan) leonine; 
as we are told, “ beauty to the eye and music to the ear ; ” 
inspired by the genius who was his comrade and who drew 
for him the greatest psychological conceptions that ever 
sprung from human consciousness “ full armed like Athene 
from the brain of Jove.” 

The Norman, full chested and deep-throated ; very tall, 
long-legged, “ like a human pair of compasses,” yet finely 
proportioned. 

The first a woodsman, alert yet dreamy, with the music 
of Arden in his soul: the other, the perfect artist-actor 
(trained by Lemaitre and fellow pupil with Charles Fechter 
whom he outshone in the theatre though not, perhaps, in 
the social way) sculptor—when playing the part of Benvenuto 
Cellini, he modelled a statue in clay before the audience at 
every performance—and painter; having walked from Rouen 
to Paris in the snow, he fashioned his costumes for Buridan 
in canvas and painted them himself so that they passed 
for the richest court attire. In those days the actors found 
their own wardrobe—as opera stars did in my early days and 
may do now for ought I know’. 

But Shakespeare ! 

Dumas told me of his first visit to London—of his watch¬ 
ing the players in the yard of the Red Bull Tavern—of 
his engagement in old Burbage’s Company. I didn’t know 
then that the detail was from my author’s imagination, I 
accepted it as historical, and it led me to seek more. He 
had taught me to read Othello and so doing taught me to 
know the other master-pieces and to love him who had given 
them to me. 


117 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


It was very good to see you though only for that flying 
visit, and your Mother’s pride in Marie’s success was refresh¬ 
ing as ingenuous. 

I must see the play again. I think it will bear it for 
its own sake ; I know it will for the acting. Marie will 
gain that light touch she needs in Act II; the boy who plays 
the scene with her was sick with nerves on the first night; 
he had a bad time in the War and is not even yet quite him¬ 
self ; he communicated his mental state and hampered 
her. 

She could not improve on her last act. In the first the 
attack was uncertain on the opening night, that will come 
right with repetition. But I have told you all this. 

And now I have a small piece of personal news. Forgive 
the vanity that makes me save it for the last. I have actu¬ 
ally got work. Amazing, isn’t it ? 

Quite an agreeable part— 

Detestable word ? 

Yes, I know, in such connection, but I can’t say better 
for it. It’s easy as pie—at least it should be. Nothing 
really to act at all. You do it on technique. If the author 
has drawn the character truly and your personality seems to 
fit you are good—if there are flaws in the characterisation, 
if your face is too round or too long or your tailor has 
not cut the waistcoat in the correct ratio to the waist-line, 
it may be said that you are “ unconvincing ” or “ unhappily 
cast.” Walkley will fire off a line of Virgil; Baughan 
comment with deprecating gravity; Littlewood will be 
patronising, Morrison sorrowful, Fargeon mordant, Haddon 
sarcastic, and Carroll insolent. 

Well, we’ll hope for the best—I’m sure you do. Chris 
will be hilarious—I extremely nervous, and the artists 


118 


LETTER NUMBER TWENTY TWO 


disengaged in Thursday’s Telegraph envious or congratula¬ 
tory according to their varying temperaments. 

I humbly await your note of congratulation. 

Yours deferentially, 

P.S.—You read, of course, how Cork celebrated the Sinn 
Fein victory by dynamiting the memorial to their dead in 
the South African War. 

How beautifully Irish ! 


119 


i 


LETTER XXIII 


London 

30 th January , 1919. 

Don’t mistake ; I like to hear the commonplace things, 
for your comments upon them are never commonplace. 
We all make the mistake of thinking it possible for another 
to hold exactly the same point of view on some one subject, 
but it just isn’t so and you’ve got to respect them very thor¬ 
oughly before you can tolerate their diametrically-opposed- 
to-yours view. But if you can discussion is stimulating. 

We could squabble horribly over General Post , but I am 
not going to. I will admit this much : that had it been 
written with more refinement of feeling by one who sensed 
the innate qualities of gentility, I might have enjoyed its 
satire. It is easy enough to set up any old Aunt Sally, call it 
the type of a class, and knock it over to an accompaniment 
of jeers from another class. The characters in this play 
pretend to be types and they just aren’t. The thesis is a gross 
lie, a pandering to the vanity of Socialism. The girl is 
a little cad without heart or decency. But there, I loathe 
the thing so that I cannot even be fair to a certain crude 
cleverness that it undoubtedly has. I couldn’t even be 
properly fair to the acting. Madge Titheradge did not soften 
for me the girl’s objectionable qualities. 

A nature is so—or so, fundamentally. Women have 
ways of hiding certain sides of themselves for years and 
years ; then suddenly surprising those who think they 
know them by some utterly inconsistent attitude. “ To 
have seen, to have heard and to have experienced ” does not 
change a nature, though it may bring out more markedly 
certain characteristics, as all exercise does—as physical 
exercise develops muscles. You say it is easy to judge, 


120 


LETTER NUMBER TWENTY-THREE 


but is it ? To condemn or to approve illogically. Yes. 
But to judge implies the exercise of wisdom and knowledge 
and the resultant Justice is a thing by no means easy in 
regard to any human affair. 

Your problem is no problem. “ The lie,” you say, 
“ hurt no one ; ” therefore it is no sin. But is such a lie 
possible ? I fear not; for a lie is pretty sure to injure its 
author, if only in his self-esteem ; that’s why it’s such a 
dirty weapon. If it leave no soil on the conscience of its 
author I feel sure it is innocuous. Whereas the truth is 
often a brutal bludgeon. Yes, and the consciousness of 
having used it cannot always be a salve to its retailer, who 
must know that he has hurt more surely than with the 
harmless lie. Some who pass for good are terrifically narrow. 
But Life isn’t; it’s just what we make it, narrow for those 
who think narrowly, but splendidly spacious for the broad¬ 
minded, the generous and the brave. 

Never believe your friend knows more than you, though 
she has read much and retained it, she doesn’t know, as 
you do, instinctively. What is the use of such ? you ask. 
Well, I take it, she is kindly if misguided : and among her 
sort and the less informed no doubt she has wiped away 
many tears—given the sympathy they understood, of a 
kind too narrow, perhaps, to fill your need, but amply 
appreciated where it was spent. 

It is not necessary to know the Why of everything : 
some things are ; their truth leaps at us, it is unanswerable. 

You are not abstruse, for you express profound thoughts in 
clear images ; I wish I had the same clarity. I fail altogether 
at times to give you my thought with which I know you would 
agree if I were as crystalline as you. 

Many like the lady you refer to have not exactly good 


121 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


but neutral intentions ; they are colourless or else chameleons 
just borrowing colour. I don’t say don’t take them seriously 
but don’t take them to heart. Don’t be impatient with them, 
it can only recoil on yourself. They are imbecile, self- 
satisfied, irritating to a degree ; they must be lead, you 
can’t drive them for they have the stubbornness of mules 
—conscious virtue breeds that. But, trying as they are, 
remember you are learning in all your dealings with them ; 
they are perpetual and shining examples of what to avoid. 

I told you when we met of my mistake about Chris’ 
admirer, who is not an actor but a young lieutenant. She has 
now written to ask if she may be engaged to him. To oppose 
would be indiscretion of the most indiscreet. Half the love 
romances of the world are fed and thrive on opposition. 

“ The course of true love never did run smooth.” 

Quite so. But the course that is smoothed is often the 
severest test of the love. So the young gentleman 
shall be “ sweetly oiled with praise ” until the qualities 
of his truth shall declare themselves. To Chris I said, in 
effect: By all means be engaged if.you wish, all I want is 
your happiness; but do try to be sure you have a friend as well 
as a lover. Love’s Young Dream is beautiful, but it doesn’t 
—can’t—fill life. There must be work as well. If you 
leave the Stage be sure you find congenial employment 
that he can take an interest in. If he leaves the Army be 
sure you can take intelligent and sympathetic interest in 
his work. Don’t dismiss Politics and Religion and say 
they won’t come into your lives, because you’ll both read 
the newspapers before you’re forty and there find perpetual 
food for controversy. Politics include domestic economy 
and enter into every business. You must take intelligent 
interest in them or you’ll be unhappy and agree about them 


122 


LETTER NUMBER TWENTY-THREE 


or be sufficiently good friends to disagree without rancour. 
And Religion includes your beliefs and your faith, without 
which life is rudderless. Learn to know each other so well 
that each may respect the other’s judgment even in differ¬ 
ing from it. 

I now await developments. 

You refer to the depression that seems to have descended 
upon us all and wonder as to its cause. 

My diagnosis is simple : a virulent attack of Wilson. 

That monumental crank butted in and prevented the 
War coming to a definite conclusion. 

Wilson is the Saviour of Germany, which in time will 
rear its head again, like the poisonous rattlesnake it is and 
strangle Civilisation. 

Everyone is depressed because the War never ended , 
it merely stopped. 

There was no victory—no defeat, and, as a consequence, 
there can be no punishment. The criminal was never 
arrested ; he goes free. How, then, can he be brought to 
judgment ? 

It becomes a question of bargaining—of relying on the 
faith—the word of the age-long liar. 

We have foregone coercion, so there can be no reparation. 

Wilson saved precious lives by stopping the War. 

Granted ! 

But millions had already been wasted and it was false 
policy to relinquish Victory and Settlement for the sake 
of the comparatively few more that might have been sacri¬ 
ficed. Decision was all-important. 

Heartless ! 

No doubt; but when Policy dictates, Humanity has no 
part. 


123 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


Wilson’s Fourteen Points are directed solely against us 
that the German-Irish element that dominates the U.S.A. 
in relation to us may dance at the downfall of an Institu¬ 
tion it loathes, its Friend and Benefactor, the British 
Empire. 

The League of Nations, if ever it materialises, will 
become a sort of official debating society ; its conclusions 
may be illuminative but no single Nation will consent to 
be bound by them to the detriment of its prestige. 

And our Government ? 

Intimidated by Democracy, or rather the Bolshevist spirit, 
fostered in Germany for the submerging of Russia that 
comes to us via Ireland and aims at nothing less than the 
downfall of England by the demoralisation of the ignorant, 
and worse than ignorant, the half-educated. This spirit 
a firm government would have crushed in its inception 
had it placed the United Kingdom under Martial Law in 
1914, as it should and might easily have done. We should 
have grumbled but submitted had the extent of the peril 
been proclaimed. 

Disraeli would have done it, or Palmerston ; but they 
were Statesmen, not pettifogging lawyer politicians and 
opportunists. 

There is no wonder people are depressed. It will take 
years to out-grow it. 

Yours, 


124 


LETTER XXIV 

London 

12 th February , 1919. 

Fundamentals ! I am not going to argue or explain, 
it would take too long and then not be convincing. If 
my ideas are so ill-expressed that they do not reach your 
understanding it is my fault and I should have more to do 
than start again at the beginning. I should have to answer 
side issues of thought that I cannot even conjecture, but 
listen : If I am an apple-tree left to grow untended I may 
develop all askew and yield unwholesome sour apples. 
If I am pruned and tended I may grow straight; and if 
I am fussed over and have a piece of sweet pear grafted on 
to me I may become a pleasant sight and yield most luscious 
fruit—but all the time and in each case I am fundamentally 
an apple-tree and nothing can make me other. How far 
it may be in our power to make ourselves agreeable or disa¬ 
greeable apple-trees without outside influence or care I 
don’t pretend to know. I guess a strong-willed apple- 
tree might insist on growing up straight and reaching to 
the sun though his lot had provided that his first shoot 
should appear in a shaded corner of the orchard. But I 
feel sure no crab-apple can, unaided, produce New Town 
pippins. 

It is true, also, for I have seen it, that a woman can and 
has hidden, deliberately, a certain side of her nature for 
years ! and then suddenly sprung it on the world. You 
say she might not have known the quality was there, but 
you are wrong, for one may look back and see that certain 
indications that were puzzles, culs de sac , now show in the 
light of this exposure as parts of her fundamental self. 
No one gambles solely owing to the influence of another, 


125 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


or drugs, or indulges any vice you care to name. The seed 
was there. 

I suppose a certain amount of discussion stimulates the 
intelligence,, I prefer to agree with you—as I know I do 
fundamentally ! 

You ask me to tell you more about my ideas of the close 
association of Shakespeare and Burbage and my reason for 
assuming the latter to have been our greatest actor. 

I leave Melingue for the present, the other subject is so 
large. 

First, then, I must ask you to accept the premise I postu¬ 
lated in discussing Garrick; namely, that the greatest 
art must have for its exposition the greatest medium. 
It is an axiom with me that the great characters of Shakes¬ 
peare are the greatest media. Accept this and I will en¬ 
deavour to expound. 

Will Shakespeare and Dick Burbage were of an age, there 
was only a year between them ; both were members of 
Burbage Senior’s Company. Dick became the leading 
man ; Will, rising from mere General Utility, became the 
hack playwright. Like many another dramatist since, he 
joined the Company to learn the rudiments of the technique. 
Pinero and Carton were both actors ; Ibsen a stage-manager ; 
most of the best dramatists have had practical experience 
on the stage. It is generally allowed that Will and Dick 
were friends. I imagine the closest tie between them, 
the tie of a unique aim of artistic expression, free from any 
taint of jealousy; for, I take it, Dick had no ambition to 
write nor Will much to act. We hear of him playing the 
Ghost of Hamlet’s father and Old Adam and we may imagine 
him in sundry other parts, such as Banquo (model of rais- 
sonneurs) the gracious and philosophical Duke, banished 


126 


LETTER NUMBER TWENTY-FOUR 


to Arden, the old courtier-warrior Bellarius and others that 
require no special gifts beyond dignity and grace of bearing, 
a resonant voice and perfect elocution, which we may well 
concede to him. I like to think of him as just the simple 
actor—groping, observing, listening, during those early 
days—“ talking Theatre,” as actors do who love it, with 
Dick on every possible opportunity. 

Eventually Dick persuades his father to let Will tinker 
some of the old plays of the repertoire, for he has perceived 
how that wondrous imagination may revivify the worn- 
out dramas, inspire their fustian and give them new heart. 
No doubt he tried his hand on dozens during his apprentice¬ 
ship and old Burbage cut his work as Irving cut Wills’— 
I mean W. G. Wills, who wrote Charles the First , Eugene 
Aram , Faust , and other plays for the Lyceum. 

Picture rehearsals during the stock season. 

Shakespeare writing, perhaps at the prompt table, a new 
speech for Dick—some lines for Condell, Henslowe or Nat 
Field, a comic scene for Somers or Tarleton or remoulding the 
leading lady’s part for Ned Alleyn. Then making notes on his 
tablets as he took his cup of sack at the tavern in the interval, 
and burning mid-night oil, with Holinshed, Boccaccio, 
Plutarch and studying to-morrow’s part. It is so feasible 
—so probable, I am certain it is fact. 

Years pass and experience is won. 

From the old manuscript of The Murderous Life and 
Terrible Death of the Rich Jew of Malta he has fashioned 
The Merchant of Venice: from The Revenge of Hamblett , 
Prince of Denmark , the great tragedy as we know it; which 
alone would have established his fame. UpononeofCinthio’s 
tales he has built the greatest of all domestic dramas, Othello. 

And Burbage ? 


127 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


He is now the leading man and has acted them all. It 
is said of him that he was “ equally delightful as the youth¬ 
ful Pericles and aged Lear.” He was the original imper¬ 
sonator of Hamlet, Lear, Pericles, Brutus, Macbeth, Shylock, 
Richard, Romeo, Coriolanus and Othello. And he acted 
them all under Shakespeare’s direction ! 

Without doubt the author’s full intent was expressed; 
no discussions about meanings or readings ; the author was 
present to explain and direct all, he, who had knowm from 
their first inception w r ho w ould portray his characters, and 
doubtless moulded them with full apprehension of his pro¬ 
tagonist’s powers—and of his limitations, if he had any ; 
though to have fitted equally as Hamlet, Richard, Othello, 
Lear, Macbeth and Shylock would seem to imply that his 
range w as boundless. 

His greatest triumph would seem to have been as Othello, 
and if he did indeed illustrate all the possibilities in his 
impersonation of “ the grieved Moor,” as is reported, he 
was undoubtedly the Actor-Genius. 

I accept him as such ; I find it impossible not to do so. 

Would Shakespeare have continued to entrust him with 
such overwhelming opportunities had he misused them ? 

It is incredible. 

Shakespeare found in his friend so perfect a medium 
that it stimulated him to his highest and noblest flights ; 
genius reacted upon genius—each w as urged to the utter¬ 
most of the possible. Together they did more than 
revolutionise the Theatre, they created it, building upon the 
fumbling attempts of their predecessors. 

In place of the recital of “ fustian ” by “ robustious 
periwig-pated fellows ” were given expositions of Truth— 
of living Reality. In place of platitudes in stilted periods 


128 


LETTER NUMBER TWENTY-FOUR 


—Wisdom, Philosophy, Beauty were crystallised in burning 
phrases ; and we may be sure that the method of their 
delivery was revolutionised by the actor, for each artist 
drew inspiration from the other : their gifts were comple¬ 
mentary. 

Shy lock, Richard, Hamlet, Lear, Othello, Macbeth were 
personated, be well assured, with as much individuality as 
differentiates their persons—they were in fact acted . 

Imagine the perfect Othello if you can ! Be sure you 
will never see him in the flesh. 

Salvini is said to have been great. I remember my old 
friend Miss Philp, of whom I have told you, said : “ I would 
rather never have lived than have died without seeing Sal¬ 
vini ! ” and she was no mean judge. It was not quite 
Shakespeare’s Othello, but let us allow it was great. But 
observe; in other roles Salvini was still Salvini. His 
physique and temperament fitted peculiarly the character 
of Othello : he exploited them. 

But Burbage was also perfectly the “ red-haired Jew ! ” 

Who else has succeeded equally in both these roles ? 

Kean? 

We will talk later of Kean’s Shylock and Othello, but it 
is notorious that he failed as Hamlet. 

Irving ? 

As Shylock ; yes; though, for me, he did not touch his 
greatest in the part—as Hamlet; unquestionably. But 
as Othello ? 

There is much to be said of Irving’s Othello. I reserve 
it. I have told you how I was disappointed in his Lear. 

But Lear is specifically mentioned as one of Burbage’s 
greatest triumphs. 

Devrient, the German, would seem to have been the 


129 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


greatest of comparatively modern Lears. Let us suppose 
him as great as has been reported. 

What of his Macbeth ? 

Here most of the great ones have failed. I do not 
know of one who excelled in the part; and no part admits 
of such a variety of conceptions. 

Yet, Burbage, with the author’s guidance, certainly made 
no mistake. 

Is it not logical to assume that he excelled in all ? I 
think so. 

I assume it and I think you must allow that the hypothesis 
is soundly based. 


130 


LETTER XXV 

London 

1 6th February , 1919. 

The Theatre was made for the Actor not the Actor for 
the Theatre. 

There is no doubt whatever about this—no possibility 
of doubt. 

The human element always predominates. It always has 
and will everlastingly. It was proved in the War—has been 
proved in every war and in every form of natural contention. 

The decor , which includes every element of the setting, 
colour scheme, lighting, grouping of supernumeraries, is 
merely adjunctive to the Actor. 

The Poet has inspiration—Well! The mere recital of his 
verse will stir the imagination—Well again ! But the mere 
machine-like recital of inspired verse in an expressionist 
decor does not make a theatre. It may make a puppet-show, 
but the Theatre implies acting , and the very moment we 
have acting, poet and decor disappear—are absorbed into, 
and thereafter are expressed solely by the Actor. From 
him, thereafter, the witnesses take their impression and to 
him the bulk of them will give their credit or their blame. 

You have heard me say again and again that a certain 
part “ carried ” the actor. His exposition was indifferent; 
he brought no special gift to the interpretation, beyond his 
bare technical accomplishment—without which he cannot 
be called actor—even bad actor—and, unknowingly or at 
least (in his badness) unimaginatively, the exercise of that 
intelligent faculty conveyed enough of the poet’s intention 
to convince the mass, but it was coloured by his individuality 
—the human element, from which it seemed to spring; 
and, bad though he may have been, the actor dominated. 


131 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


Shakespeare knew this. 

It was for this reason that he took pains to create a series 
of psychological studies unequalled as vehicles for the exploit¬ 
ation of the Actor’s Art. 

Shakespeare has himself defined the Art of the Actor 
in those admirable tenets laid down by Hamlet in his Advice 
to the Players. 

“ To suit the action to the word, the word to the action.” 

By action Shakespeare did not mean merely physical 
gesture, but included intellectual revelation. 

Intellectual revelation implies expression of the soul 
of the dramatist’s creation ; physical gesture includes an 
appearance, deportment and diction consonant with such 
creation. He who combines these attributes in just pro¬ 
portion has attained the perfection of technical skill; given 
these qualities, it would seem to me that we have the full 
equipment of the dramatic artist. Such artist having for his 
material the work of genius, must inevitably reveal genius 
in himself. 

Shakespeare therefore took infinite pains so to create 
and portray his characters that, much as they might suffer 
from inadequate representation at the hands of the ill- 
graced artist, they should afford the fullest scope for the 
genius-interpreter. 

I know my attitude would shock many who regard 
Shakespeare with such awe—such reverence for his in¬ 
spired gifts as the unique poet—that they would consider 
it profanity thus to approach the Man. They believe, 
even, that they know more about his work and the way it 
should be interpreted than those who recognise in him the 
supreme Man of the Theatre. They will tell you that his 
thought was not for the Actor at all; nor even of the 


132 


LETTER NUMBER TWENTY-FIVE 


just psychological development of his characters, but 
worship him as an inspired machine for the grinding out 
of verse. 

They ignore the fact that verse was merely the medium 
for his expression of a superb theatrical technique. 

I understand this lack of sympathy for the Theatre^ 
and, as his genius places him upon an unapproachable 
pinnacle as poet, I recognise the excuse for the attitude. 
But Shakespeare’s extraordinary technical skill cannot be 
an accident. He had trained in the theatre to acquire it 
and I maintain that, if accident there was, it was in his 
God-given gift of poesy ; for his human conscious labour 
lay in the struggle to achieve perfection in his metier. 
He was primarily the playwright and his crowning triumph 
lay in the fact that he became the First and Greatest of all 
Playwrights. 

He is the First and the Greatest because he is always 
true ; his instinct is unerring ; his logic of mentality irre¬ 
futable. 

The proof of this is that if an actor is puzzled as to the 
precise meaning of a passage he has only to memorise and 
speak the words with conviction (knowing that they must 
be the right words) and inevitably their full sense will break 
on him. He will, feel them his own—the best possible 
to express the thought, and the thought will be the inevitable 
thought sequent to the subject. The transcendent genius 
of Shakespeare will breathe spirit into his understanding. 

I am not going to tell you how Shakespeare did for the 
English language what Dante did for the Italian; my concern 
is what he did for the Stage. He not only created the greatest 
vehicles for Acting and instructed us how to use them but 
he standardised the Art. 


133 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


The roll of English dramatists contains many illustrious 
names but I can think of no great actor who has not set the 
seal upon his greatness by his interpretation of some char¬ 
acter of Shakespeare. 

He is so great that his name alone is the touchstone of 
greatness. 

Why is this ? 

Because others, while striving to afford acting opportunity 
—and often failing—generally thought first of their beautiful 
words. 

Shakespeare never did this. Action ! Action all the 
time ! A flow of rhetoric, yes ; thought, profound, analytic, 
philosophic ; wit, humorous, caustic or satirical; fantasy, 
poetry, imagery, perpetually ; but always as a vehicle for 
the exposition of character. It is never the poet’s voice, 
always the voice of his creation revealing its soul. 

How often do we hear: “ Shakespeare says-” 

(For example) “ . . . . that which we call a rose, 

“By any other name would smell as sweet;” 

He didn’t. Juliet said it. 

“ If music be the food of love, play on.” 

Shakespeare ? No ; Orsino. 

We are at liberty to guess Shakespeare’s sentiments on 
these subjects, and it pleases us to feel that they coincide 
with his characters’, because love of roses and music seem 
to us our English poet’s inevitable qualities. 

“This precious stone set in the silver sea.” 

Shakespeare’s patriotism ? No; John of Gaunt’s. 

“ I charge thee fling away ambition.” 

Wolsey’s bitterness. 

“ Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.” 

Marc Antony’s irony. 


134 



LETTER NUMBER TWENTY-FIVE 


Did Shakespeare hate ambition ? 

You will find no passage where a character of his approves 
it as a quality. 

I suspect, as I once told you, that in Elizabethan times 
ambition was considered only as an attribute of tyranny—that 
the word was not in use as qualifying honest endeavour. 

The old actors used to carry on conversation solely by 
quotations from the plays—and not so very long ago I have 
heard them. 

I seem to wander ; but it is in my effort to convince you 
of the perfection of Shakespeare’s work as the actor’s vehicle. 

And now consider this—a thing which we have all come 
to regard as commonplace, yet truly a marvel that should 
fill us with continual amazement—he created a whole gallery 
of sweet and pure girls and young wives who are yet great 
acting parts ! 

This would not strike the lay mind as remarkable because 
it does not know or else forgets two facts ; first, that women 
never appeared upon the stage until Shakespeare had been 
dead forty-four years and that consequently these creations 
were purely idealistic : and second, that no one had ever 
done it before. 

Read the works of the other dramatists and see for yourself. 
If their women are good they are colourless. Sweet 
Seventeen has no character in their hands ; she simpers, 
she pouts, she wails or she moans, she loves without soul or 
depth of feeling, she even commits suicide in unconvincing 
despair, but the best she reveals of herself is an insipid 
prettiness. 

Compare Miranda, Ophelia, Cordelia, Desdemona, Imogen. 

I don’t name Beatrice, Rosalind, Viola or Portia because, 
being comedians, they may be said to be what actors call 


135 


K 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


Character parts ; far more easy to write—and to act—than 
straight parts. 

Imagine Miranda attempted by Massinger, Ben Jonson, 
Webster, Ford or Beaumont and Fletcher ! 

Extend the range of comparison ; reinforce the Eliza¬ 
bethans with the stalwarts of the French Theatre, include 
Corneille, Racine, Moliere, Voltaire. 

Can you find anywhere the dainty grace, simplicity, 
good sense and true womanliness of the girl-woman, Miranda? 

Extend it still further; admit Schiller and Goethe. 

Gretchen ! 

I believe she stands out as the solitary achievement of 
sweetness and purity allied to definite character among them 
all. 

Gretchen apart, not only had no predecessor nor contem¬ 
porary of Shakespeare succeeded in creating a type of the 
simple maid, human and palpitating, who was yet a good 
acting part —BUT NO ONE HAS DONE IT SINCE ! 

Tragedy Queens by the score, talking like men, gesticula¬ 
ting, fulminating, agonizing, vociferating tirade on tirade ! 

But compare Berenice, Camille, Emilie, Hermoine (Andro- 
maque ), Semiramis, Phedre with Cleopatra, Queen Katharine, 
Volumnia, Cymbeline’s Queen, Queen Margaret, Lady 
Macbeth. 

Even on this ground Shakespeare beats them all. 

Faithfully to reproduce humanity or credibly to create 
it is not necessarily to provide acting opportunity. This 
has been abundantly proved ! Perfectly consistent human 
characters may talk brilliantly and expose their inmost 
souls, but if their story be not unfolded in action the result 
cannot be called Drama (Spav —to do, to act). 

Shakespeare knew this and kept it ever in mind. 


130 


LETTER NUMBER TWENTY-FIVE 


Thus the Play Scene is not inevitable to the unfolding. 
Hamlet does not move against the King—in spite of his 
protest that he will “ take the Ghost’s word for a thousand 
pound,” and although he most clearly “ catches the con¬ 
science of the King ” in his “ mouse-trap —until he has 
seen the wicked Claudius murder his Mother. It occurs 
merely to provide acting opportunity, which it most effec¬ 
tively does. 

It is Siward’s army and his own fatalism, not Banquo’s 
Spirit, that over-throws Macbeth. Yet the apparition of 
Banquo furnishes Macbeth with one of his greatest moments : 
that is why it is there. 

Lady Macbeth’s nightmare does not advance the argument 
one w r hit: had she “ died hereafter ” it would not have 
affected the catastrophe. The scene w r as inserted merely 
to afford opportunity for an actor’s tour de force. 

Claudio’s brutal and flagrantly caddish designation of 
Hero as a “ rotten orange ” on the steps of the altar and the 
w r hole of Don John’s artificial imbroglio are pure “ melo- 
dramatics” according to the definition, and in no wise concern 
the love affairs of Benedick and Beatrice ; yet they are 
full of acting chances and lead to the lovers’ most effective 
scene. Voila la raison d'etre. 

The exposure of Parolles has no bearing upon the main issue 
of Helena’s pursuit of Bertram; yet what fat for the comedian! 

And it was not merely in the manufacture of scenes, but 
by the introduction of set speeches that Shakespeare designed 
opportunity for the display of his actor’s skill. 

I picture Dick Burbage linking his arm in Will’s, as they 
left rehearsal for the luncheon interval and adjourned to 
the neighbouring hostelry for a cup of canary, and insidiously 
suggesting : “ Look here, Will, Lady Mac. had a glorious 


137 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


ramp about the raven in the Castle scene, can’t you keep 
her out of the Court-yard for a bit and give me a chance ? 
Macbeth is always seeing witches and things ; suppose I see 
a bloody dagger floating in the air. You could write me a 
gorgeous bit on that.” And Will, while the drawer refills 
the cups, jotting down on his tablets :—“ Is this a dagger 
that I see before me ? ” and a few notes to be elaborated 
later into the magnificent rhetorical flood by which, no 
doubt, Burbage stirred to its highest pitch the enthusiasm 
of the patrons of the Globe. 

Similar ebullitions occur in many of the plays; for 
example, that speech which is the exasjieration of the pro¬ 
ducer:—“Once more unto the breach, dear friends!” 
When presumably the whole action of the play stops while 
Henry exhorts his troops. 

Again ; the cynic Jaques’ review of the Seven Cycles of 
Man’s existence. 

The much-quoted Mercy speech, with which Portia holds 
up the process of Antonio’s trial. 

Juliet’s self-hypnotism to the point of tragic horror 
before she swallows the Friar’s narcotic. 

And the bare-faced interpolation of that exquisite 
phantasy imagined by the stalwart Mercutio (beau-ideal of 
mediaeval swashbucklers) describing the whirling course 
of the fairy midwife’s intrepid cortege athwart the senses of 
slumbrous humanity. 

I maintain that all these scenes and episodes, which are 
in no case inevitable to the construction, were invented 
simply and solely for the purpose of affording vehicles for 
the actor; and they are, in fact, identical in substance if not 
in form with the opportunities occurring in the type of play 
which our critics deride as Melodrama. 


138 


LETTER NUMBER TWENTY-FIVE 


The truth is that Shakespeare was King of Melodrama- 
tists. 

The reason he transcends all other melodramatists being 
that he was incapable of psychological misstatement. 

Even the unnecessary assassination of Emilia is justified 
by the illogical cruelty of Iago’s jealousy in the moment of 
his “ foredoing Iago, the monumental self-lover, who was 
always stung to the depths of his wickedness in witnessing 
even the smallest measure of prosperity or joy in another. 

Coleridge tells us that whenever he believed he had found 
a psychological flaw in Shakespeare, though he hugged 
the discovery for years, he was always forced to admit in 
the end that Shakespeare was right. This is where the 
lesser dramatists fail. 

But who is greater than very much less when measured 
against his stupendous Genius ? Set the whole sum of 
dramatic and poetic achievement in the balance and Hamlet , 
Macbeth , Lear , or Othello in the other scale and their work 
shall kick the beam. 

As my dear old Dumas w rote of him ; “ le poite qui a le 
plus crte aprds Dieu ! ” 


139 


LETTER XXVI 


London 

1st March , 1919. 

Hamlet says : “I did love you once.” 

But did he ? He may have thought he did, but in any 
case something else has swamped his life and Ophelia is 
forgotten—which is proof that he did not! He could never 
have loved her. How could that frail simple creature 
ha ye satisfied or been in any sense complementary to his 
nature ? The Hamlet nature has no room for love. Intros¬ 
pection rules out that emotion which feeds on sacrifice, 
given and accepted without thought of self or gain. 

Romeo thought he lo ved Rosaline; a mawkish sentimentality, 
"then he met Juliet and he knew Truth. His whole nature 
changed—or rather, different aspects of it gained ascendency. 
He became manly—he suffered ; there is no love without. 

We speak disparagingly of the love of Romeo and Juliet, 
missing what is so clearly there. We scoff at love at first 
sight, and rightly as a rule. It is only in rare instances 
that Intuition flashes the truth into the souls of each in that 
first meeting : generally, in such cases, it is a purely physical 
attraction that has no spark of spirit in it. But to those 
two there was instantaneous revelation, they never doubted 
and they were right. 

My Chris was doped. David was amusing himself— 
perhaps realised she felt deeper than he thought possible, 
or ever intended—floundered -grew ashamed and lied. 

I am not excusing him. I am just trying to understand. 

Chris was dazzled ; suspected no shallows and dashed 
into the flood without thought. 

He deserves to be hurt, but not shot. She deserves 
something—less than she’s got, poor child. 


140 


LETTER NUMBER TWENTY-SIX 


A woman mustn’t believe all a man says when he’s making 
love to her—and generally doesn’t unless she knows his 
nature well enough to have a reasonable faith that it comes 
from the depths. Men always say the same commonplaces. 
You may read them in books, or in the letters that get 
published in Divorce and Breach of Promise cases. 

This sounds brutal doesn’t it ? 

I wish it were not true. 

Chris—or any of five hundred other girls—listens to David 
—or Tom or Dick or Harry—and without troubling to know 
anything about his character, puts all her faith in his silly 
words—and they all use the same words ! 

Are the foolish males to be shot and the silly females com¬ 
pensated ? 

It is a large question—too large for me. 

But I feel there is an answer other than the claim of the 
advanced latch-key girl for an equality that is merely the 
excuse for license. For, depend upon it, sensuality in some 
form is at the root of all the trouble or what is called the 
Woman Question. 

Those who feel deeply suffer more acutely than the cooler 
tempered, but the great law that governs the universe, 
the Law of Compensation, restores the balance by giving 
them more exquisite joy in attainment. 

And who shall affirm that the cold-blooded are necessarily 
better balanced than those who feel ? 

What says Hamlet ? :— 

“.bless’d are those, 

“ Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled, 

“ That they are not a pipe for fortune’s finger 
“To sound what stop she please ; ” 

Obviously. The temperate are most bless’d—negatively, 


141 



LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


for they miss the heights as well as avoid the depths. I had 
rather be the Dane than the “ antique Roman.” 

If impulse prompts the wildest act which yet achieves 
success and injures none who shall dare brand the actor as 
unbalanced ? 

Human judgment is nearly always unjust, but we must 
have laws, I grant. Yet our laws are based, in the main, 
on the law of averages, which is Chance. I once lost nine¬ 
teen times running at baccarat—it cost me nine pounds in 
ha’pence. Most laws are like that. They are right— 
or wrong—for nineteen cases and the reverse for the twenti¬ 
eth. Lucky if you have capital to win on the twentieth 
chance, be your fund-Pluck or Endurance. 

The only immutable law is the Law of Compensation, 
but we need the record of all time past and eternity to work 
out its principle. 

There is no perfectly just human law. 

The Law of Compensation is another name for God. 

So, then, while we are here each of us were best to be a 
law to himself, and in himself he will find direction. Follow 
it and he can’t go wrong. Also—defy it and he may go 
right by accident. 

But is it right to go right by accident ? 

Is it not, only in degree, less wicked than to go wrong 
deliberately ? 

Are there degrees of Right ? 

There are certainly degrees of Wrong, but surely Right 
is absolute. 

Is any Right that gives pain all right ? 

Or any Wrong that gives joy all wrong ? 

All time past and eternity alone can answer. 

Madness ! Ay, but there’s “ method in’t.” 


142 


LETTER NUMBER TWENTY-SIX 


You have called me mad. 

I wish it were true. I should be a better actor. 

Why do we take pleasure in being told of ourselves what 
we know is not true ? We all do at times. 

Meanwhile my poor Chris is suffering; and David is a 
cad. 

He certainly is. He remembered, it seems, that he had 
a prior engagement. I don’t envy the fiancee. I con¬ 
gratulate Chris. 

Where is my horse-whip ? 

Laid up in lavender for a stage prop. 

Behold my unheroic pose as outraged parent! The 
faculty of seeing two points of view is disastrous to heroics. 

And so David goes free ? 

I think not. The fiancee , if she does not suffer a like 
disillusionment, will amply avenge her unconscious and 
wholly guiltless understudy. 

Chris shall not play Ophelia—nor I Polonius. 


143 


LETTER XXVII 


London 

13 th March , 1919. 

My dear Redgie—Yes, we will be conventional—you 
ask my opinion of the cast for the proposed revival of 
The School for Scandal. The mistakes in it are so obvious 
that it is inconceivable that they have not been made 
deliberately. To Mary Grey is given Lady Teazle and to 
Leah Bateman Lady Sneerwell. The latter is too clever 
and experienced an artist to fail in any part, but she has 
qualifications that fit her peculiarly for Lady Teazle and she 
would, if she were allowed, give a memorable performance 
of the part. Whereas Mary Grey has no qualifications for 
Lady Teazle but might be able to carry off Lady Sneerwell. 
As for the two leading men ; it wouldn’t matter that Arthur 
Whitby is fat if he could be tetchy, but Whitby is geniality 
in perpetual effervescence, whereas the geniality of Sir 
Peter is always an effort. Doctor Johnson was fat and 
tetchy and we can well picture him as the type of confirmed 
bachelor, but we could never so imagine Whitby. H. O. 
Nicholson—whom I strongly suspect of being the best 
actor I know ; any way I can think of none better—can be 
equally convincing whether genial or tetchy : in a word 
he is an actor —which is not saying that Whitby isn’t; 
but there are actors and actors, those who use their person¬ 
alities and those who adapt them ; and using personality 
is not the same as exploiting it. A great actor does all 
three on occasion—as Irving did. 

Herbert Waring will be wrong as Joseph. His curious 
affectation of a lounging manner disqualifies him for period 
plays, though it fitted rather happily some aspects of the 
extraordinarily effective part he played in The Adventure 


144 


LETTER NUMBER TWENTY-SEVEN 


of Lady Ursula. It won’t fit Joseph. Waring was at his 
best years ago at the St. James’ ; he gave us then a series 
of very convincing pictures of nervous excitability. His 
Sir Brice Skeen in The Masqueraders was remarkably good, 
as was also a performance of his in a play called Lord 
Anerley —adapted, without acknowledgment, from an old 
yellow-back novel, whose title I forget. In it Bourchier 
appeared as Alexander’s double, which to-day would seem 
impossible to the degree of amazement! 

Leon Quartermain is to be Charles Surface—and later 
leaves the cast to play Mercutio in Doris Keane’s revival 
of Romeo and Juliet. His Charles will be good—but not 
right. His Mercutio with Ellen Terry’s Nurse—she won’t 
know a line of the text—will be the hits at the Lyric, but it 
will be as w r rong as his Charles. Mercutio is a swashbuckler. 
Quartermain will make him a courtier and something of 
a fop—w r hich is Tybalt’s role. Tybalt will be played as a 
black-brow r ed bully (as usual) instead of the pale-faced 
fair-haired Venetian dandy :— 44 these strange flies, these 
fashion-mongers, these pardonnezmois ! ”—whose self-con¬ 
sciousness and utter lack of humour keep him forever on 
the rack of irritability. But Mercutio, 44 bold Mercutio,” 
44 stout Mercutio,” although the 44 Prince’s near ally ” 
is little of a courtier and nothing of a fop. I picture him 
always (as I do Benedick and Gratiano), with something of 
leather and steel about him. He practically describes his 
own temperament in his banter of Benvolio :— 44 thou art 
as hot a Jack in thy mood as any in Italy ... an there were 
two such, we should have none shortly, for one would kill 
the other,” and that reminds me of a perfect performance 
I once saw of Benvolio by—Guess. You can’t. Granville 
Barker. Who would suspect him of it to-day ? But for 


145 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


Mercutio : had you seen Terriss in the part you would know 
exactly what I mean. Even the Queen Mab speech conies 
better from this virile type ; the pretty-boy makes it effemi¬ 
nate, which is detestable. 

I predict that Doris Keane will be sugary and shallow. 
But I admit to a prejudice against Shakespeare in Ameri- 
canese : Basil Sidney should be good ; he is not effeminate. 
Has he poetry ? I don’t know. Franklin Dyall is too 
hard for the Friar, but the words will be spoken beautifully. 

And Ellen Terry will be—Ellen Terry; a charming 
elderly lady in place of that abominable old bawd the Nurse. 
Strange how this character is ahvays misrepresented and 
the verse cut to make her merely slightly unsympathetic, 
which is condoned by her age—for they ahvays seek out 
some sweet-faced old lady to play the part. It will sound 
sacrilegious in Juliet to qualify Ellen Terry as “ ancient 
damnation.” Like Wyndham, she has a soul of eternal 
youth and, though she might suggest the mischievous 
Puckish spirit, I cannot think she will convey the coarse 
grain of the Nurse nor the blunt-edged cunning of her plebian 
type. 

Talking of Puck, w r hat a problem he presents. I find it 
quite impossible to conceive him in human shape. To 
my mind Puck and Ariel alone make the tw r o plays—or 
rather, Masques—in which they occur impossible for the 
theatre. The exquisite poetry and humour of A Mid¬ 
summer Night's Dream are too precious to be lost, so I 
suppose we must continue to tolerate inadequate productions 
of it, but a stage-play it is not. 

In his most delightful book Shakespeare's Workmanship , 
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch describes how it should be presented: 
in the hall of some old country house—as a charade. He 


146 


LETTER NUMBER TWENTY-SEVEN 


doesn’t say this, but describes how he would set the stage to 
represent sucli a scene. But I can’t conceive of the stage 
as a medium for the expression of an unreality. What is 
there shown must rely for its prosperity upon the degree 
of its perfection in creating the illusion of fact. If to 
make a myth believable we must present it in a suggestive 
and anachronistic setting, by all means let us do so ; but 
don’t let us attempt a myth within a m} r th. That is why 
dream plays so often fail. The Public will accept one make- 
believe, but their credulity shies at a second make-believe 
within the first. 

So, then, I would relegate performance of The Dream to 
the oak panelled hall with double stairway and gallery 
above the great doors opening on the park of some great 
country mansion. But even there we should be baulked. 
Quiller-Couch, for all the modesty of his demand, asks the 
impossible. For the end, he says, he would have the 
fairies “ swarming forth from cupboards and down curtains, 
somersaulting down the stairs, sliding down the baluster 
rails.” Imagine it—with Stedman’s or Italia Conti’s 
children ! 

There is no disguising it: fairies are not possible on 
the stage. The illusion of a single fairy may be created 
if, by a miracle, you are able to secure an appropriate 
personality ; but Peasblossom, Cobweb, Mustard-seed and 
Moth by children or young women of the ballet or chorus 
are what they are and no other. 

You know Noel Paton’s picture in the Edinburgh 
Art Gallery ; there you have the right suggestion of the 
elves and imps that Shakespeare imagined, but the effect 
is not possible with humans in the parts. Children are not 
small enough and far too clumsy, their undeveloped features 


147 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


cannot suggest the intelligence necessary to the illusion. 
And as for Puck— 

I have seen Louie Freear. Did she play it in Tree’s 
production ?—I forget—or was it with Benson at the now 
demolished Globe ?—at His Majesty’s I think. 

I preferred this quaint little person in Boy Bob or as the 
odd little Slavey singing Sister Mary Jane’s Top Note. I 
found in her grotesquerie no suggestion of the elfin sprite 
and the effect on the exquisite fantasy was for me 
disastrous. 

Then Titania—Oberon— 

Julia Neilson made a beautiful Fairy Prince—and so 
did Otho Stuart at the Globe. Miss Neilson sang divinely, 
and yet—Somehow the very perfection of her vocalisation 
dispelled the atmosphere of faery. Stuart did not sing 
but I couldn’t help thinking—perhaps I saw the production 
too near to Christmas-time—rather of the Prince the fairies 
sent to Cinderella than of the Prince who ruled the King¬ 
dom of Fairyland. 

The three groups of characters do not blend : the Athenians 
—Well, we can accept them if the actors can speak the verse ; 
the Warwickshire Clowns—They also may be convincing— 
till they meet the Athenians, when each group destroys 
the truth of the other : the Fairies simply falsify both, 
without themselves convincing. 

No, let us do the thing somewhat as Quiller-Couch sug¬ 
gests : in an old Country Mansion, by a flickering fire-light, 
with a single hanging lantern and a flood of moonlight in 
the forest beyond the heavy doors ; with the finest voices 
we can find to speak the glorious poetry ; the ripest humour 
we can recruit and the sweetest singers—who yet shall never 
vocalise but murmur their numbers softly from the shadows. 


148 


LETTER NUMBER TWENTY-SEVEN 


The alternative, as I conceive it, is to do it frankly as 
a Masque in some Banqueting Hall, or Throne Room, with 
rich dresses, tapestries, a blaze of light and no attempt— 
except in the Clown’s scenes—at acting or illusion of any 
kind. 

The same method would best suit The Tempest. Undoubt¬ 
edly that is how both plays were first presented. Ariel 
is as impossible in the flesh as Puck. As Drama both plays 
must always fail: as Poetry both are immortal as the fame 
of Shakespeare. 

Yours, 


149 


LETTER XXVIII 


London 

30 th March , 1919. 

You accuse me of lack of interest in the Actors’ Union 
movement. You are wrong ; it is not interest I lack, but 
comprehension of the mentality of those who, professing 
an Art, deliberately set out to coarsen it by commercialism. 
It is so easy not to go on the Stage ; there is no obligation. 
Also it is possible to leave it—though not so easy—if it 
does not suit you or you it. I have known several instances of 
actors giving it up and those not the least successful. But to 
stick at acting and in revenge for disappointment to drag the 
art down to the artisan level is a sin against the Holy Ghost. 

No, that’s not blasphemy ; for if the thing is not spiritual 
—an inspired gift—what is it ? 

Such desecration is best left to the Butchers who run 
some of the theatres. 

But, you may say, it is protection for real artists against 
those same Butchers that the Union seeks. 

I will try to answer you. 

I know little of the proposed plans, except by the printed 
matter that has been sent to me and by a particularly 
offensive letter or article signed by James Carew. But I 
know well that a great number of quite worthy but very 
shallow persons are attracted by what they conceive to be 
the glamour and glitter of stage life to follow a calling for 
which they have no call. And it is amongst these that you 
will find the agitators, who are reinforced by some of true 
artistic temperament who conceive, quite wrongly, that by 
sacrificing themselves they are somehow benefiting others. 

The only way they could really benefit them would be in 
teaching them to act—which is impossible. 


150 


LETTER NUMBER TWENTY-EIGHT 


I repeat: acting is not an intellectual accomplishment, 
it is an instinct, which requires very special gifts to develop, 
among them a cast-iron constitution, extraordinary intelli¬ 
gence and unremitting application. The Art itself combines 
all the other Arts and yet remains the most elusive. In 
its highest form it sways the world—none other has such 
universal appeal. Success in it panders to the vanity even 
of the inordinately vain—hence its attractiveness. 

But these of the Actors’ Union to whom it seemed so 
easy and who find it is not the cinch that they supposed— 
since it means work —turn bitter in their resentment and 
seek to cheapen it, using that very weapon of commercialism 
under the lash of which they are squealing. 

Curse the craven crew ! Can’t you see that mainly it 
is the vanity of incompetence that binds them together— 
the fear of being found out ? 

Because they have—what they call—acted they think 
themselves actors. 

I might as well call myself a plumber because I can put a 
new washer on a leaky tap. 

An actor is an artist or he is nothing and the artist knows 
that his individuality is his greatest asset; he would pledge it 
to no union, association, guild or league to control or to 
compel. Any attempt to organise the artist is fore-doomed 
to failure, for in the moment that he is 44 totted up ” and 
scheduled he is no longer an artist. 

The work of the bricklayer, mason, plumber, carpenter, 
riveter bears positive resemblance—or should—to the work 
of another of his trade. The artist’s work is valueless if 
it bear not the stamp of his own personality , and who shall 
estimate the worth of that ? 

By the value he sets upon it himself you shall know him ; 


151 


L 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


and though you may not consent to buy at his own price, 
the price he can get for it is the only standard of its worth 
—the actor’s work is not like a rare print whose value in¬ 
creases with age—and if it be worth purchase it is for those 
very qualities that he would starve rather than barter his 
soul for to commercialism. 

The only excuse for going on the Stage is an overwhelming 
love of the Art of Acting. 

That 44 each man killeth the thing he loves ” is the only 
excuse of the Actors’ Union. 

They tell us other professions have Unions and cite the 
Medical Association, but there is no parallel. 

Are medical students admitted to the Association ? 

Are they allowed to practise while they are still 44 walking 
the hospitals ? ” 

Do they not pay heavy fees for instruction and live on their 
means until they are competent ? 

Are they not obliged to pass examinations and win diplo¬ 
mas ? 

The Actors’ Union demands payment for rehearsals. 

Does a doctor claim payment for the time he spends 
preparing for an operation ? 

Would you trust a neophyte to amputate a leg or cut out 
an appendix ? I wouldn’t. 

The analogy doesn’t exist. It’s a fallacy. 

Science is exact. 

Art is full of inexactitudes—physiological as well as term¬ 
inological. 

It is beside the point to say—as you might—that the 
modern actor is so cultured that he would make no use 
of the bludgeon that Trades’ Unionism would place in his 
hands. If it be not for use why seek to possess it ? 


152 


LETTER NUMBER TWENTY-EIGHT 


A bludgeon is a threat to break the peace upon the appear¬ 
ance of a problematical If. It’s a dangerous weapon and 
when possessed collectively the existence of one hot-head 
among the possessors—especially if he have eloquence— 
threatens danger to the community. 

The possession of a dangerous weapon implies the inten¬ 
tion or desire to use it. That is why Scotland Yard makes 
stringent laws against the carrying of fire-arms. 

Protection ? 

In a long experience I have known far more dirty tricks 
—and dirtier ones—played by actors upon managers than 
ever I heard of as being played by managers upon actors. 

I don’t pretend to experience of the wrongs I am told are 
indicted upon chorus girls in cheap Revue ; most of them, 
judging by their attitude and language in the Railway 
Junctions on Sunday journeys, would be more suitably 
employed in factories or as kitchen maids ; still there may 
be some excuse for these to form a Union of protection— 
and offence. A set price, agreed upon, for chorus singers 
would not affect Art one way or another. Should one of 
the chorus become an actor, he or she could easily leave 
the Union and acquire personal dignity with independence. 

The Actors’ Union proposes to fix a minimum wage 
(Note : It is no longer Salary) of Three Pounds per week. 

Do you suppose that Irving when he played in the Stock 
Company at Sunderland would have kept his engagement 
had he demanded three pounds a week ?—or even half of it ? 
He wasn’t worth it and he knew it. It was the work he did 
then for a salary (not a Wage) that was barely enough to 
live upon that helped to make of him what he became ; and 
the hardship was as much a part of the training as the parts 
he wrestled with. 


153 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


But suppose us Unionised and the minimum wage agreed 
upon. 

Manager requires Francisco. 

Is Francisco worth Three Pounds ? 

By no stretch of imagination. 

Rather should the would-be actor—I assume that only a 
beginner would accept Francisco—pay three pounds for 
the privilege of learning what the play of Hamlet is about— 
I mean in action ; presumably he knows as much as can be 
learnt of it in the study—although I doubt even that of 
the novice of to-day. 

But Manager agrees (strongly resentful) to pay three 
pounds for Francisco. What must he, in justice, pay for 
Hamlet ? 

At least three hundred, surely. But that is his share on 
a good week’s business. It’s absurd. 

Regard it another way. Francisco gets ten shillings per 
performance ; then Ophelia, you must allow, may command 
no less than fifteen and ninepence. 

Let us suppose Manager accepts that view. He offers the 
part in open market at that price. 

But does he ? — will he ?—will anything compel him 
or induce him ? 

“ No,” he says, “ I want Miss So-and-So.” But Miss So- 
and-So demands ten pounds per performance. True, 
she has never played in Shakespeare, but she would like 
to try, her pearls have just been stolen or she’s given birth 
to twins and Manager thinks—considering the Press-boom 
she has had—that it may be a good investment. 

Where is the Union then ? 

It “ protects ” incompetent Francisco ensuring him a 
wage three hundred per cent, beyond his deserts ; but it 


154 


LETTER NUMBER TWENTY-EIGHT 


does not even pretend to assist a dozen competent Ophelias 
who are out-bidden or under-sold by another group of in¬ 
competents. 

Now suppose the Union in excelsis , forcing the Manager 
to accept the first applicant and pay the agreed rate 
and obliging us to accept it; for all actors must be members 
and none may undersell another. 

Ophelia is to let at—never mind the rate. 

A lady offers herself, suited possibly for Magda, Hedda 
Gabler or Bjornsterne-Bjornsen’s Swava, but with no single 
qualification for a classic role. 

Manager has seen her attempt Ophelia in a memorable 
revival and deplored the lamentable consequences, but he 
is compelled by the Union to employ her. 

Imagine his plight! Can’t you see him tearing his hair ? 

The Union, you understand, does not guarantee compe¬ 
tence ; yet it seeks to force the Manager, not only to pay 
for rehearsals, but to guarantee a specified term of engage¬ 
ment. It would bind him to incompetence and oblige 
him to pay it. This must, in the end, break him economi¬ 
cally. 

Is this cricket ? 

But I forget: cricket is a game Unions never play. 

Now for your answer :— 

It is that the Artist must make himself a necessity, so 
that the Manager cannot afford not to engage him under a 
contract whose terms shall be mutually agreeable. 

Unless and until he can do that his services are worth 
just precisely what he can persuade the Manager to give 
for them—no more. 

I repeat: it is quite easy not to be an actor. Many of 
us strive all our lives and achieve no more than that. 


155 


LETTER XXIX 


London 

17 th April, 1919. 

It is sometimes quite impossible to establish perfect 
sympathy with the mood in which a letter is written though 
one may know the writer through and through ; and the 
temptation to be didactic on occasions is irresistible. Con¬ 
sider : the Post-Master-General takes charge of the letter 
and holds his tongue ; and though one’s correspondent may 
peruse it in stammering indignation and proceed forthwith 
to splutter the said indignation on paper in scathing invec¬ 
tive, the Post-Master-General keeps the lid upon all this 
moither until, refreshed and fortified by two nights’ rest and 
a whole day of purring self-satisfaction, one unenvelopes 
the missive of contradiction. Who could not keep up his 
end of an argument in such conditions should venture to 
postulate an opinion never-no-more ! 

But you have a gift of words, Redgie, sometimes quite 
remarkable, and when you employ it to flay me I am 
duly chastened, even though I may enjoy the sense of not 
having deserved it. That sense of conscious martyrdom 
is the most despicable. The self constituted martyr has 
no sense of humour—no friendship or affection—no 
thought but for his miserable ego. He can tolerate all 
things but to be ignored. Hugging his grievance, he is a 
scourge to his neighbours while begging of them to scourge 
him. “ Time brings in his revenges,” which is a way of 
saying there is Justice as well as Charity under Heaven. 
It is just that the bubble of a conscious martyr’s vanity 
should be pricked; though the prick be acknowledged 
merely as an added thorn to the prickee’s self-adjusted 
crown. We should “ wipe away all tears ”—True, except 


156 


LETTER NUMBER TWENTY-NINE 


those of self-pity, which do not deserve the courtesy of a 
kerchief. 

I have known martyrs—But who am I to judge ? What 
is Right for me may be bitter wrong for another. What is 
Wrong for me may be permissible, even desirable, in one 
who does not see with my eyes. I claim no license for 
myself and I would have none act in opposition to his con¬ 
science. In conscience is the God that judges. For God 
is not an Act of Parliament or a Police Court Magistrate 
with a rigid code in black and white which must be applied 
according to the letter, irrespective of circumstance or tem¬ 
perament. 

You would remind me of the Ten Commandments and it 
is true that the Mosaic Law is the most admirable table of 
discipline yet evolved from human conscience by Divine 
inspiration; but I take—in all humility—a larger view of 
God’s justice, which would not be equity if it did not weigh 
all the conditions in and under which we act. The parochial 
view of the Almighty as a suspicious Elderly Person of 
narrow views and limited faith in humanity is an insult; 
God is a Gentleman. 

Do you remember the story of the wise Hebrew in The 
Decameron ? It is, I think, the third novel of the First Day. 
The Sultan, wishing an excuse to confiscate his huge wealth, 
endeavoured to trap him to committing heresy by demand¬ 
ing of him which of the three great religions was the True 
Faith. The True Faith is, in fact, the one we believe to 
be true, as Boccaccio very well knew—as, indeed, he knew 
most things. I think there can have been very few men 
wiser than he. Shakespeare did well to borrow from him ; 
and what he did not borrow he still might have found in his 
Book ; for I have yet to hear of the plot, story, eomplica- 


157 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


tion of incident that is not to be found in the wonderful 
Hundred Novels. 

Shakespeare’s most obvious cribs were the trunk incident 
in Cymbeline and the story of Gilletta which became All's 
Well that Ends Well; and of all the plays these two seem 
to me most to fall short of what they might have been. 
The obvious great scene is omitted in both. 

I suppose Cymbeline was in a great measure a pageant 
on its original production. It affords such scope that 
elaborate production seems to be an essential part of it: 
the British Court; the Italian Palace ; the Welsh Hills ; 
the Roman Legions marching from Milford Haven ; the 
Vision of Posthumus ; the Battle ; the British Encamp¬ 
ment after the Fight. All these ask for the full glory of a 
series of gorgeous pictures. I regret I missed Irving’s 
production, but, to say truth, I did not want to see him as 
Iachimo. But the play, of course, is Imogen and I regret 
that I did not see Ellen Terry play her. 

Iachimo has been called “ little Iago ”—perhaps the name 
is a diminutive—but I can find no sort of resemblance in 
their natures. Iago is not a sensualist, as I understand him ; 
whereas Iachimo is that first and always and of the most 
confirmed sort, the cold-blooded, calculating type. I see 
a stout, thick-necked, flap-eared, hanging-lipped Greek, 
the kind of beast we used to think of as the typical Cape 
I.D.B. when we were all preoccupied with South Africa. 
Think of his gloating calmness in the bedchamber, as, intent 
on winning his wager and quite unmoved, he schedules 
Imogen’s extraordinary beauties. He is a connoisseur, 
but satiated. His unctuous enjoyment in his cold-blooded 
contemplation is an added insult to the feminity he is plot¬ 
ting to traduce. 


158 


LETTER NUMBER TWENTY-NINE 


Of course the thin-lipped type may make a good job of 
it; Willard played it on those lines, as he played Sextus 
Tarquin, but, to my mind, his method was more fitted to 
the latter part : I am inclined to include it in my list of 
Great Performances I have seen. I certainly saw Willard 
do nothing better. 

But the great scene that is not in the play ; imagine it, 
as Shakespeare might have written it, if, in place of Caius 
Lucius, Iachimo had found Fidele senseless on the headless 
trunk that she thought Postumus ! She knowing him (on 
her recovery) he never suspecting her. Remember, 
women are never recognised as women when male-attired 
in Shakespeare. Imogen waits, suspicious and watchful; 
then in his tent, after the battle, when Iachimo lies wounded, 
helpless on his couch and memory of her dawns on him as 
she recounts her wrongs— 

But there, no attempt of mine to describe it will equal 
your imagination of what Shakespeare could have made of it. 

Then with Marie as Imogen and—Ah, who as Iachimo ? 
Louis Calvert has the figure, but—well, it would seem that 
Calvert has now given up acting. 

But why speculate ? The play needs nine men to play 
fine parts. Think of it! NINE who can all speak blank 
verse and act ! I don’t believe there are so many on the 
stage. 

Marie has too strong a personality for Helena. Of all 
Shakespeare’s heroines I think she is the most difficult 
to cast. She is in no sense an actress type, yet the artist 
must be a consummate actor. If she should miss a single 
note of sympathy she fails. Gentle even to nobility, yet 
full of humility ; gracious, loving, lovely. The part does 
not play itself. 


159 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


And Bertram. How to gain sympathy for him ? Yet it 
is essential. A frank impulsive boy, with a boy’s natural 
cruelty—yet hardly vicious ; the thoughtless cruelty of 
youth that we forgive ; the kind that passes into a great 
gentleness and understanding as experience grows and youth 
evolves to manhood. 

There is further use of Boccaccio’s Wager on a Woman’s 
Honour motive, complicated with what I may call the 
Substituted Bride theme—upon which Shakespeare founded 
All's Well and used again in Measure jor Measure —in 
Dumas’ Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle , translated by Sydney 
Grundy and produced at His Majesty’s as The Silver Key , 
with Kate Rorke in the title role , Tree as the Due de 
Richelieu, Lewis Waller as the lover and Mrs. (Lady) Tree 
as the Marquise de Prie —a character that greatly shocked 
Paris on the original production. 

I wonder if you secured a real Strad. I don’t know a 
thing about it, but reason seems to say that if the shopman 
knew it genuine he could have got a better price than £10 
in London or some large centre. I’m afraid it was not a 
sporting chance, Redgie. A violin worth ten pounds in the 
lumber room for twenty years ! No : two pounds or sixty, 
not just sober ten. 

But you ventured. 

Like you, I never regret my stupidities if I walk into 
them with open eyes. If I realise afterwards that my eyes 
were shut I want to kick myself. I’ll buy a picture—when 
I can afford it—because I like it; never because a shopman 
swears it’s a Murillo. 

Well, I hope your Strad is a Strad, my last Chippendale 
was Wardour Street. 

A bientot. 


160 


LETTER XXX 


London 

2 8th April , 1919. 

If the bombs had to fall I do wish one of them had demo¬ 
lished Denman House, the South-Eastern corner of the block 
that is the Piccadilly Hotel. It is an eyesore, an affront, 
the monument of a wilful and deliberate effort to create 
an Uglier London. How an architect could reconcile it 
with his artistic conscience to become party to the per¬ 
petration of such an atrocity I can’t conceive. Here is an 
edifice, not, perhaps, very beautiful, but symmetrical and 
of a certain dignity, and on one corner, where a massive 
pile should rise to balance the structure, a disjointed, 
inarticulate mass, crowned with a squat cupola and orna¬ 
mented with a stunted obelisk, leans against it like Wee 
McGregor making a “ long nose ” at Rob Roy. The whole 
Parish of St. James’ should rise in protest. 

But who cares for Beauty now ? 

The Parish of St. James’ is impoverished to pay doles 
to the indolent—too heartsick striving to keep a roof above 
its head and a bar to its door against the aggressive insolence 
of Labour to spare thought for ^Esthetics. 

The dignity of London has departed with its gaiety, for 
this new craze of feverish self-indulgence has no claim to the 
name. 

Oh yes, we still have the Tower and Westminster, but 
they are solitary monuments and the atmosphere that once 
surrounded them has been exorcised by the demon of Modern 
Improvement, which might be an amiable devil if it had a 
soul. 

It would not surprise me if, one day on my walk city-wards, 
I saw a contingent from Chelsea—my birth-place, I almost 


161 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


blush to own—painting the dome of St. Paul’s to match 
my great-grand-Aunt’s patchwork bed-quilt, a jazz of colours 
in cubist design. Strange how this new Art is but a revival 
of an old form ; but our ancestors knew better how, when 
and where to apply it. 

The majestic stretch and sweep of Regent Street from 
Portland Place to the Duke of York’s Steps is now broken 
and its unique beauty forever destroyed. 

Of Piccadilly Circus nothing remains but the name. 

Of the Cri., The Pav., The Troc., and the Cafe Nicole— 
Well, The Cri. remains ; and in place of the art of Wyndham 
we have A Little Bit of Fluff! 

Wyndham ! 

My first recollections of him was in Pink Dominoes (1877, 
I think) and then I remember more clearly Augustus Harris 
as the boy with the air balloons. But I grew to know and 
love Wyndham as I watched him through a long series of 
Light Comedies. I think of him now as two distinct persons; 
the dashing touch-and-go comedian of military carriage, 
with crisp, brown, curly hair and fair moustache—what 
verve ! w'hat easy grace ! what perfect aplomb and control ! 
what irresistible fascination !—and later as the middle-aged 
raisonneur , clean-shaven and grey, with unmatchable charm 
and a curious break in the voice that added effect to a manner 
no woman could withstand. I believe he played Charles 
Surface with his moustache; if he did it was unforgivable 
and I prefer to forget it—as I do his David Garrick and (with 
regret, I must add) Cyrano de Bergerac. I wonder what 
induced him to make that gravest error of his theatrical 
life. There was only one English actor who should have 
played Cyrano. 

Wyndham was delightful in Louis N. Parker’s Rosemary 


162 


LETTER NUMBER THIRTY 


(written with Murray Carson) though he failed in the final 
Act. He had to be ninety years old and, as I told you, he 
could never play an old man, though he must have been 
close on seventy when he attempted it. But he was at his 
best, I think, in The Case of Rebellious Susan and Captain 
Drew on Leave ; in the latter play he acted with delightful 
Marion Terry, whom I never saw but once at a disadvantage 
and that was as Mary Stuart when she most palpably knew 
nothing of her words. 

Yes, I have happy recollections of The Cri., which from its 
unique position must always be a most successful theatre— 
if the play be light and even only tolerably good. 

The little streets opposite were narrow, and no doubt it 
was best that they should go ; I don’t regret the passing 
of The Pav. — the present Pavilion Theatre is not recognisa- 
bly the same. 

And The Troc. ; that is wiped out also and I never miss it. 

It is difficult to realise that these old-time Music Halls 
were crowded there together in their little back streets 
when there was no Shaftesbury Avenue and that The Cri. 
crouched in its dim narrow thoroughfare. 

The string of Turns in these halls grew rather wearisome. 
I remember once sitting through a whole evening at one of 
them—I forget which—and listening to twenty-eight; 
and, as each lady or gentleman favoured us with two songs 
and some of them gave us three, Variety was hardly the 
term to describe the entertainment; especially as the 
majority of the songs lacked distinction either of melody 
or humour. Of course there were good Turns among them 
and of the sixty odd songs no doubt quite six were striking ; 
but I remember no more than that I found the evening very 
dull. As I remarked on my first visit to a Parisian Revue : 


163 




LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


If you want to find Joy and the Spirit of Youth you must 
take them with you. So it was very often at the old-time 
Music Hall. 

But I have happier recollections of The Oxford, perhaps 
because I was allowed the honour of a seat at the Chair¬ 
man’s table. An important personage the Chairman of 
the old fashioned Music Hall; he sat on a dais in the centre 
of the Stalls, at a table surrounded by a chosen few who 
enjoyed the privilege of paying for his drinks. He an¬ 
nounced the Turns and lead the applause with his hammer 
(whose rap it was anathema to disobey) kept order and gener¬ 
ally presided and directed. 

“ Ladies and Gentlemen, Miss Bessie Bonehill will now 
oblige ”—or Mr. Charles Godfrey—The Great Macdermott— 
Mr. James Fawn—Mr. Arthur Roberts—and many I forget. 

To hear Charlie Godfrey sing Inkermann or You may talk 
of Colonel Burnaby was a huge delight; he hadn’t an H 
in his composition, but the gusto with which he could “ put 
over ” a song w r as amazing and inimitable. Bessie Bell- 
wood was another priceless personality. Vulgar? Undoubt¬ 
edly ; but a born artist and with all the innate and insouci- 
ante happiness of the cockney, the old fashioned cockney, 
the most care-free type, I suppose, ever know r n. The 
morose incivility of the modern taxi-driver and Tube porter 
is apt to cloud recollection of the friendly disposition of 
their predecessors. In those days the disgruntled ones 
drove four-wheeled cabs—hence the term Growler. Gentle¬ 
man Joe, who steered the Gondola of London, is a type that 
has completely disappeared. 

I daresay you w onder why I revive memories of these old 
Music Halls that are now so irretrievably of the past that 
you can form no true conception of them. 


164 


LETTER NUMBER THIRTY 


It is because they were shrines of a very distinctive and 
very real form of art and I cherish remembrance of it as we 
preserve the kindred types of humour and wit in the work 
of Rabelais. 

You may still see and hear Marie Lloyd, the sole survivor, 
last of a hardy race. I forget whether T. E. Dunville is 
one of the old ones, he is certainly of the old school. These 
two are unique ; independent of their surroundings, they 
create their own atmosphere, focussing attention and filling 
any building. 

Marie Lloyd is an institution and is allowed unusual 
latitude ; she is a dynamo, physically and—un-morally. 
Her technique was always unrivalled ; her appeal, which 
at one time was mainly sexual, is now impersonal. The lure 
was set to draw the assembled youth ; it still exists but its 
appeal is for us all, regardless of age, and it draws us to 
consider the compensations that life holds if we can but 
develop to the full the sense of humour. Who ever has heard 
her sing, Oh , Mr. Porter ! is not likely to forget it: Dun¬ 
ville, being of the male persuasion, is not so licensed ; yet 
on occasion he exceeds his limit. This you would gladly 
forgive if you loved him as I do. 

How is it that this form of entertainment has grown archaic? 

Because the galaxy of lions comiques , as the Eighties 
called them, has dwindled to two. 

They allowed themselves to be seduced out of their sphere 
to become Stars in Pantomime and Revue. Forsaking 
Music Hall-dom for Theatre-land, they became hybrids, 
welcomed in both camps, properly at home in neither ; 
ousting the actor from his nest while the circus-clown, 
tumbler, balancer, tight-rope walker and juggler played 
cuckoo in their own. 


165 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


The two worlds of the Theatre and the Music Hall were 
as sharply divided as France and Italy. Revue has proved 
to be the tunnel of Mont Cenis. Both, now, are overrun 
by this form of amusement, which is not revue at all, but 
merely a batch of Turns loosely strung together. 

When I was touring—oh, thirty years ago—with a Drury 
Lane drama our Leading Lady left us to play Principal 
Boy in a Pantomime. I wonder how many Leading Ladies 
could do that now ! 

The Leading Man in earlier days often became the Demon 
King at Christmas, with a Song or Recitation in the Cavern 
Scene. The Heavy Man became Will Atkins or the Dame. 
Only a few days since I met an old actor whom I have seen 
do both—and he wrote the Pantomime as well. 

Pantomimes then were legitimate in the sense that they 
were constructed with a sequent story, had scenes of serious 
interest and were not interspersed with Turns. 

Children loved them a great deal better. 

It is not so long ago that Chris burst into tears during 
a Pantomime—the Comedians (in modern clothes) were 
busily engaged in working a prolonged Confidence Trick 
gag-scene, which no none appreciated as they did them¬ 
selves : their efforts had certainly no remote connection with 
the story—the child couldn’t stand it and exclaimed : 
“ I wish those horrid men would go away ! I want to see 
Cinderella ! ” Boo-hoooo- ad lib. 

Briefly the Music Hall Comedian has assassinated Panto¬ 
mime and is now himself rapidly nearing dissolution. 

But I shall go and hear Marie Lloyd and Dunville just as 
often as I can and I advise you to do the same. 

Yours, 


166 


LETTER NUMBER THIRTY 


Tuesday , 1 a.m. 

P.S .—I have been to see the Princess at her matinee. 
She has improved her performance a hundred per cent. 
I believe she suffers, as I do, from an inability to give her 
best on the first night when the verdict for good or ill is 
passed. She must conquer this ; it is part of the cause 
of my failure. As regards her performance ; all is now 
harmonised, reconciled and co-ordinated; the light and 
shade is perfect—could not be better. Had it been so in 
the beginning-But what use to speculate ! 

She came with me after to tea in the Savoy lounge. We 
talked of Helena. She says she wants to play her and now 
I believe she could. 

Which reminds me that I forgot to tell you of the scene 
which I wish Shakespeare had put into the play—in place 
of some things we might quite easily have dispensed with. 
I refer to the climax of Boccaccio’s novel in which Gilletta 
presents her twins to Beltramo. Had Shakespeare thought 
to use it he would not have needed two babies to multiply 
effect in the maternal appeal and complete the humanising 
of Bertram. Instead, he gives us one of his well-made 
final Acts, gathering up all the threads and tying them off 
with perfect stage-craft, as in Measure for Measure and 
Cymbeline , but leaving Bertram unfinished—at least, 
so I always feel—and Helena just a little less sympathetic 
than she might be. I should have preferred that deep 
resonant chord of maternal appeal as the note of the recon¬ 
ciliation. 

“I’ll love her dearly, ever, ever dearly” 
does not convince me. It is bald. 

Marie tells me you are coming to town next month. I 
look forward to our meeting. We shall talk—at least 


167 


M 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


I know I shall—and you, Redgie, are a Heaven-sent 
listener. 

I don’t think my play will live through the Summer. 
Chris returns at the end of June. 

And I have another tinker’s job ! 

Good-night. 


168 


LETTER XXXI 


London 

8th May , 1919. 

Oh, for a breath of pure sweet wholesome sentiment in 
Art—the Theatre, Novels, Music, Pictures ! 

The so-called Realists refuse to see Beauty even when 
it is actually beckoning them ; and when they must per¬ 
ceive it delight in debasing it. 

If I were a painter I would give you two pictures of a 
ruined French village and both should be unmistakably 
recognisable. Both should show you vividly the last 
epic struggle in the little church ; but while one portrayed 
nothing but horror ; the desecrated altar, the scarred pillars 
and the shattered glass, blurred with blood and smoke ; 
the other should show the sun-rays piercing the maimed 
vault, re-consecrating the altar, healing the scars and 
resolving the splinters of the holy pictures into glittering 
rubies, topazes and sapphires, typifying the glory of self- 
sacrifice and triumph ; and none should dare say the latter 
was less true than the first. 

But Art to-day seems to be merely glorification of the 
Ineffectual. 

Of set purpose it holds up distorting mirrors and delights 
in exposing the foibles and failings of poor humanity. 

The contemplation of Slavonic ulcers and Teutonic gan¬ 
grene may be delectable entertainment for the neurasthenic, 
but the cutting out of social wens, goiters and abscesses, 
steeping them in the cankered spirit of hysterical visionaries 
and using the Theatre as laboratory for their exposition, 
must inevitably revolt the public conscience at last. 

If Art does not exalt—ennoble, the exponent is a charlatan 
with the soul of a sewer-rat. 


169 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


Deliberately to use the forms of Art to pander to base 
passions is rank blasphemy. 

The German Reinhardt sent us Sumurun and beautiful 
as some of it was the taint of unhealth was in it. There 
were suggestions so coarse that only the fact that it was 
“ made in Germany ” commended it to the snobbery of 
certain leaders of fashion who delight always in the pro¬ 
duct — as Gilbert says—“ of every Country but our own” 
As a home-produced effort it would have failed : it would 
have lacked that unwholesome spice. 

But to me the vice of allowing the picture to sprawl 
outside its frame on what has come—since its introduction 
then—into common use in every revue under the name of 
the Joy-plank, was its worst offence. Reinhardt, in that 
ballet and later in his productions of CEdipus Rex at Covent 
Garden and The Miracle at Olympia, sought to make his 
audience an integral part of his entertainment. 

It won’t do. It will never do. It may have a vogue for 
a season, even for a few years, but it cannot be permanent. 
I believe the greatest debt we owe to David Garrick is that 
as Manager of Drury Lane he was the first to put the audi¬ 
ence in its proper place ; on the other side of the floats 
in the auditorium, as spectators. 

Something of the atmosphere of Sumurun pervades the 
production of Arnold Bennett’s play Judith at the Kingsway 
Theatre. It is impossible to describe it exactly except 
by the one word—unwholesome. Presumably it is pre¬ 
sented as the author wished. There is no attempt to re¬ 
constitute the period, but merely to create an atmosphere 
that reeks of some indescribable loathly decadence, suggestive 
of unholy rites in secret places. 

“ A pious coquette ogling the Chief Eunuch : ”—That is 


170 


LETTER NUMBER THIRTY-ONE 


how one critic described the Judith of Lillah McCarthy and 
I wish I had had the wit to say it first, for it crystallises 
in perfect prism my impression of this performance. Miss 
McCarthy’s art is distinctive ; in parts as various as those 
she played in the Norwegian play The Witch and Shaw’s 
Man and Superman (pyrotechnic dialectics! ) she could 
not be bettered. Her stage personality is aromatic; the 
scent intoxicates, not with the fumes of frankincense and 
myrrh—as Judith’s should—but with the acrid tang of 
hyssop and vinegar—it whips to alertness. In Samson and 
Delilah Saint-Saens’ music undermines “ with voluptuous 
swell ” the stern morality of the religious theme. In this 
version of Judith - how different from Madame de Girardin’s 
that Rachel played—the moral sense is equally corrupted 
by the mise-en-scene and the atmosphere of decadence that 
pervades it. 

There is one performance—But, no, I won’t speak of it; 
nothing so revolts me as doubt about the sex of any human 
animal. It w r as a relief to contemplate the robust manhood 
of Claude King whose Holofernes is incredibly Biblical 
but indubitably male. 

The two wisest and most helpful books—as well as the 
best English—I ever read were Shakespeare’s and the 
Book of Job, and I find no pessimism in either. You may 
wish to argue about Job, but you won’t about the other. 
Of course things—everything—have a confusing number of 
angles ; the number is, indeed, illimitable to every concrete 
fact, but we really are not called upon to consider them all. 

“To thine own self be true.” 

Where there is light there must be shadow. But light 
is Truth ; shadow' is mere negation, a mist, a vapour, an 
unsubstantial exhalation. It settles on us and in our 


m 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


weakness—in that untruth to self (which creates injustice 
toward others)—we lack the moral force to rise through it 
into the clear sunshine of Truth which is there behind the 
cloud. 

Art and Religion are curiously blended. 

True Art is Religion, for it is an aspiration towards 
the expression of all that is best in creation, which is another 
way of saying—worship of God. 

And Religion is Art, for the more sincere the expression 
of our veneration for the Supreme, the more artistic its 
form must be. 

I have seen also a play called Victory at the Globe Theatre 
and thought it very bad. You know I like what the critics 
call melodrama, if it be good of its kind. This isn’t. You 
may consider it unsound to say that if the parts are good 
the play must also be and I am sure the average critic 
would laugh at such a statement, but that would be because 
he did not trouble to understand all I mean in calling a part 
good. There may be a part attractive to the actor in a bad 
play that is not really good intrinsically, but I am sure 
there is no really good play without at least one good part 
in it. In Victory there is only one good part and that 
a very small one ; a Chinaman, which is made good solely 
by the art of the actor, George Elton. But Elton is guar¬ 
anteed to give a fine performance of anything : one day he 
will give us a great performance, if any manager is sufficiently 
astute to afford him the chance. There is another part, 
Mr. Jones, that might have been great if the actor had known 
how to handle it—and if it had had anything to do with 
anything. Even as it is it is far better than the actor, 
who, I surmise, is playing it only because he looked like the 
producer’s idea of it as he walked into the manager’s office. 


172 


LETTER NUMBER THIRTY-ONE 


But to my point: a part can’t be good unless it is 
psychologically credible—or can be made credible by fine 
acting—and unless its influence is vital to the development of 
the plot. Now surely if a play holds such a part it must 
be a good play. I can think of no instance where such a 
part existed and was acted and the play failed. 

Can you ? 

Yours. 

P.S.—Victory is an adaptation of anovel by Joseph Conrad; 
that is no reason why it should not be a self-contained, 
work. All plays should be that—adaptations included. 
Adaptation is really a very difficult art though universally 
sneered at. Woe betide the adapter who relies on scissors- 
and-paste ! he will fail lamentably, for that is precisely 
the way not to do it. It is the spirit of a book that must 
be expressed in the different medium ; merely to transfer 
the characters and their dialogue without, what I might 
call, the author’s rubrics, is to present them in two dimen¬ 
sions only. In Victory neither the characters, the environ¬ 
ment nor the story are clearly defined. I have not read 
the book but I suspect scissors-and-paste. 


173 


LETTER XXXII 


London 

18 th May , 1919. 

The great mistake you altruists make is to suppose that 
those of different fibre suffer as you would if deprived of 
certain advantages you enjoy. You are quite wrong. They 
have no conception of what you would miss and therefore 
never note the lack of it. Rather are they to be congratu¬ 
lated than commiserated. The cruelty you inflict upon 
them is in striving to cultivate in them a sensibility foreign 
to their natures ; the seed of which, how r ever, breeds in 
them the germ of discontent. You torture yourselves in 
imagining how you would suffer were you in the circumstance 
of those you choose for your pity. 

No doubt you would, but they don’t. 

You can’t miss your Rolls-Royce if you have never 
possessed one and to preach that they have a right to one 
without working for it is to inculcate the deadly sin of Envy, 
which is a double-edged wickedness because it 44 gnaws 
inly ” as well as prompts to violence. It is inhuman to 
train to a taste for butter the palate that has always been 
content with margarine. 

That is where the Reformers step in and delude the tender 
hearted. They say in effect; if the Duke of Westminster 
has a Rolls-Royce why should not his dustman ? If I 
enjoy butter, why not my tweeny ? 

The argument is not sound. Carry it a step further— 
all sound arguments can be carried the step further. Which 
is preferable ; a Rolls-Royce for every individual—or for 
none ? The only possible conclusion from the social Re¬ 
former’s standpoint is the extinction of the Rolls- 
Royce. 


174 


LETTER NUMBER THIRTY-TWO 


Breed is everything. Birth would not be the first thing 
if it were not the most important. 

You don’t pity a cart-horse for not being a Derby winner 
—and you don’t pity even the non-starters : you are only 
sorry you backed them—if you did ; and that teaches you 
to be there on the scratch yourself. 

But these Reformers, who reform nothing and nobody 
and find their delight in raking out cess-pools and stirring 
up stagnant filth—these howling Leaders, who gain notoriety 
and a big income by preaching Class-hatred, inciting to 
arson and murder and inoculating the incompetent with 
the deadly virus of Envy, just stink in my nostrils. 

Individuality is our one great God-given asset. “ ’Tis 
in ourselves that we are thus and thus. Our bodies are 

our gardens to the which our wills are gardeners.the 

power and corrigible authority of this (all that we may 
elect to be and do) lies in our wills.” 

What ? you say, you quote the Arch-Envious in support 
of your thesis ! 

To which I answer : It is not Iago’s shrewd, hard common 
sense we have to fear but the perverted conclusions he bases 
on his facts ; therein lies his potency for evil. 

“The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose”— 

and he is wise. 

“And oftentimes to win us to our harm 

“The instruments of darkness tell us truths.” 

Mephistopheles is no fool; he knows better than to base 
insidious wickedness on lies, his premises are sound—and 
so, perhaps, are some of Mr. Smillie’s. It is in the false 
deductions he draws that the evil lies and in their applica¬ 
tion to the wrong sort of intelligence. 

Listen to Mr. Smillie now dictating to the whole nation. 


175 



LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 




He has the gift of the gab and a flair for the effective kind 
of sob-stuff equal to Walter Melville’s, and equally shameless 
assurance in offering it to the crowd, who lap it as—No, 
“ cat and cream ” is too dainty a simile—who swill it like 
hogs, guzzling, slobbering and wallowing in it like the glut¬ 
tonous foulness they are. For the mob is foul in its senseless, 
conscienceless, bestial cruelty ; it can only mar—tear down 
—crush and stamp out. It is individuals only who build, 
never the tub-thumper, rarely the orator, generally the 
silent thinker. 

By all means let the chords of sympathy tang but pre¬ 
serve their melody for the deserving ; don’t waste it on those 
who have “ no music in their souls,” who are fit only for 
“ treasons, stratagems and spoils ” and give only hate in 
return for it. 

You imagine that Gwendolyn is happier with her clean 
pinny and her hair tied with pink ribbon, playing with her 
ten guinea doll’s house in her expensive nursery than Sally 
in her ragged frock and smeary face, making mud-pies. You 
are wrong—though I believe you’Id agree with me in this 
particular instance, but you don’t apply it. The lower orders, 
so-called, have always had a better time than the middle 
classes and as for the aristocracy—except for a notable few, 
who make a lot of noise (or rather have a lot of noise made 
about them) so that we are apt to think they are the majority, 
when in reality they are but a small minority—their res¬ 
ponsibilities are so enormous, and for the most part faith¬ 
fully fulfilled, that their lives are passed far otherwise 
than in the pleasant pastures that Mr. Smillie pictures 
for his deluded ones. I doubt he believes it; he’s too 
clever. 

It is the vulgar newly rich who give Society its bad name, 


176 


LETTER NUMBER THIRTY-TWO 


and they flourish in all grades ; they are to be found among 
the riveters on the Clyde and the miners of South Wales, 
where they are just as pestilential as in Mayfair. 

There is nothing—absolutely nothing ! you can tell me 
about poverty. If I seem to lack sympathy with those who 
do not rise from it, it is because I know that all that is needed 
is the will to do it. It can be done, even though one may 
be cast down seven times. I have starved more times than 
that and I may again. 

There is no sympathy for the unsuccessful actor. Why 
should there be for the plumber or bricklayer who fails ? 

We started equal, for my means consisted of less than a 
modern Board School education when the loss of my Father 
obliged me to take five shillings a week in the City. My 
Mother’s meagre pension did not pay our rent. How we 
lived I don’t know, but we never begged and we never stole 
and what we borrowed has been paid back. 

I have never known success and now it is too late to hope 
for it; but I love my work as well as though it had rewarded 
me. I know my failure is due to my faults ; and that no 
one has ever given me a helping hand must be because I 
have not deserved it. 

But these people—I mean the plumbers and bricklayers 
—prey upon me, they conspire against me and rob me of 
my hard earnings by means of their Unions and legislation 
their tyranny has enforced. I have to educate their children 
—doctor and feed them, and my own kiddie and I may 
starve for doing it. 

I have been sneered at by the modern golfing actor be¬ 
cause I started as a Super. 

I have always been shabby, of necessity, and now that I 
can afford a decent coat my pride won’t let me wear it. 


177 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


I don’t know quite how you’ll regard this. I only know 
how I feel about it. Pride is a much abused word and per¬ 
haps I am abusing it. What is the right word anyhow ? 
I won’t be pitied—certainly not by those I despise. I 
don’t want to despise anyone, but I should despise those 
who would be polite to my new coat as they have never 
been to my shabby one. 

Manners ! Manners ! 

Is my shabby coat bad manners ? 

I know it was not when I could afford no better—so long 
as it was clean and well brushed. But now-? 

To whom do I owe duty more than to myself ? I have 
few friends but no man ever had better. The first friend I 
thought I had I dropped like a hot cinder from the day I 
heard him say : “ What’s the use of friends if you can’t 
borrow from them ? ”—I don’t forget Cicero’s first Law of 
Friendship : Ask nothing of thy friend, and I don’t claim 
to be wiser than he—Those I have kept I wouldn’t change 
for-Well, for success ! 

But here the immutable Law of Compensation gets to 
work : though I am not aware of any active enemy, there 
are some, I know, who cordially detest me. I suppose that 
is inevitable. I don’t think I dislike them for it. It’s a 
terrible handicap at times to understand. If you don’t 
you butt through where understanding makes you stand 
aside for another to pass. 

Who was it said : “ The man who never made an 
enemy never made a friend.” If nobody did here you 
have it. 

There is one man—and I can think of no other—whom I 
really dislike. I won’t use a harsher word ; I certainly don’t 
hate him. He is a manager and twenty years ago he did 


178 




LETTER NUMBER THIRTY-TWO 


me as dirty a trick as one man could do another. We meet 
sometimes, but never see each other. One day we met in a 
lift. The conversation was amusing. 

“ After you.” 

“ Thank you.” 

And he scowled because I was laughing. 

Yes, I do say and always shall, that Manners are more 
important than Morals, because, though we are concerned 
for the morals of the few who are near and dear to us, we 
are affected by the manners of all with whom we must rub 
shoulders every day and all day long. 

But all this has nothing to do with Mr. Smillie. My hatred 
for him and his gang is quite another matter. 

Procrastination is a national characteristic but it is not 
chiefly responsible for the Nation’s troubles. I can quite 
believe that Mr. Smillie’s gang may attempt the assassina¬ 
tion of King George ; but if they were to shout that intention 
in Trafalgar Square now—to-day, the ineradicable English 
trait of refusing to suspect evil intent in any one, even the 
proven enemy—very lovable and generous as it is—would 
let us watch the murder being done and then say : “ This is 
very deplorable ! ” 

I hate these Labour Leaders because their preaching is 
degrading those who might be loyal citizens—because it is 
subversive to law and order—because it encourages denial 
of the essential virtue of Reverence. I hate them because 
they are enemies to England. 

The Red Flag is the negation of individuality ; it stands 
for the brutish mob, which has no faculty of reason, but only 
instinct, grasping, cruel, destructive. 

Where is the personal dignity of the old Guildsman who 
took pride in his labour ?—in the chair or table he had made 


179 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


—the lock—the pot—the boot—the watch he had fashioned 
with his own hand ? 

It has been killed by the licensed conspiracy of Trades’ 
Unionism. 

Mrs. Silver is at work in the passage with her Bissel. 
Do you know what a Bissel is, Redgie ? a vile invention ! 
like most labour-saving devices it compensates by racking 
nerves. It squeaks as it rumbles on a sort of mezzo- 
soprano note ; it works in swathes, back and forth, with the 
regularity of waves breaking on shingle ; and when it stops 
its pause is as trying as its perseverance for you dread its 
recommencement. 

I succumb to it. 

Yours. 


180 


LETTER XXXIII 


London 

31s£ May , 1919. 

What is my favourite part ? . 

Do you mean of those I have played ?—or of those I want 
to play ?—or of those I imagine ? 

The greatest parts written in my time, I think, are Herod, 
in Stephen Philip’s play ; Giovanni dei Medici (I believe 
it is Giovanni) in The Cardinal , by Louis N. Parker ; Pierrot 
in Laurence Housman and Granville Barker’s Prunella 
and Cyrano de Bergerac. 

I have not read Herod and my recollection of it calls to 
my mind a matinee audience (with only some thirty people 
in the Stalls) rising in their seats and cheering again and again 
Maud Jeffries for her beautiful performance of Mariamne 
in the second Act. 

The critics had never a good word for this lady. It has 
always puzzled me, for, in addition to an admirable technique, 
sense of character, a musical voice and gracious manner, 
she had splendid force, exceptional beauty and inherent 
charm of personality. No doubt she has them still and is 
happier out of this precarious and disappointing profession 
in her Australian home. 

I met Maud Jeffries, for a moment only, on a railway 
platform when she was Wilson Barrett’s Leading Lady, on 
one of those impossible early Sunday morning journeys 
that the touring actor suffers, and was astonished by her 
freshness and vivacity in circumstances that show most 
women at their dowdiest. 

Her Mariamne moved me profoundly and not me alone, 
but, as I have said, everyone else in the theatre. 

Tree was Herod ; at least, no, he wasn’t, for he could 


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LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


never be any part that needed the Grand Manner—I don’t 
mean by that anything stilted or rhetorical, but just clear 
and firm diction, dignity and grace of gesture and that subtle 
sense of period, that seems now one of the lost arts. But 
one could see the wonderful part with all its wealth of 
opportunity sticking out through his inadequacy. 

The Cardinal was, I suppose, not a very good play. Parker 
is always graceful, but not always dramatic. It was rather 
severely handled by the critics ; but I feel sure that had it 
been acted with inspiration it would have been lifted to a 
level that demanded higher consideration, and the Public 
would have crowded to its performance. 

Prunella is a sheer joy. I put it with Besier’s Don and 
Quality Street and count these three the most delightful 
light plays of my time. I have seen three Pierrots : Graham 
Browne—neither fantastic nor spiritual—Granville Barker— 
understanding, but too intellectual—and Milton Rosmer 
one of our very best actors, yet again too material. It 
is not strange ; all the circumstances of the modern actor’s 
life are against his preserving idealism. If he be successful 
he goes into Society—God help him ! he takes the chair 
and addresses meetings ; which means he must become a 
politician. It is true politicians act , but they don’t act 
poetry—which is Truth and Beauty—if they did they’Id 
become Statesmen. 

Cyrano ! 

Now I’m going to say some horrible things. I never quite 
believed in Rostand ; brilliantly clever, of course, but wasn’t 
he the least bit a showman ? No conscientious artist, I 
feel, could have so subordinated his puppets (they are no 
more) to his main conception. Consider Raguenau. What 
a character he might and should be ! Where is the soul 


182 


LETTER NUMBER THIRTY-THREE 


of Roxane ? Christian is a mere lay figure. To me— 
though a great work—the play seems written for pelf and 
the glorification of the actor-manager, one of those so lack¬ 
ing in self-confidence that he feels it essential to dwarf the 
other characters in order to magnify his own. It is a curious, 
paradoxical form of vanity but very prevalent. 

But the part of Cyrano is wonderful—infinitely greater 
than the whole, which is a distinctly disagreeable knock for 
Mr. Euclid. 

I have seen Coquelin and Wyndham play it and now 
Loraine. Wyndham, I am happy to say, I forget; I don’t 
remember him in one single scene. He made up as the Duke 
of Wellington—funked the nose, which in Coquelin’s case 
was the one God gave him, slightly exaggerated : it didn’t 
even alter his expression. Loraine’s is clever, but produces 
the effect of a mask. Cyrano’s nose has always had too 
much attention. It is the Pons Asinorum. Paragraphist 
asses exaggerate the difficulties of negotiating its bridge. 

Consider the play. What remains in the memory ? Act I 
—the most effective first appearance of Cyrano. The duel 
as he composes the sonnet. Coquelin quite perfect. Loraine 
admirable though not so entirely effortless as the French¬ 
man. Act II—Coquelin’s wonderful art in obtaining 
fifteen varieties of expression on the word “ owi.” But 
the scene is built up to this. Correct application of technical 
skill does it Loraine does it. There is no denying that 
Coquelin did it to perfection. Act III—the picture of the 
balcony. Loraine’s translation is inadequate. An adapta¬ 
tion in sound prose would have been better than the affecta¬ 
tions of this verse—with interjected French phrases. The 
music of the words is all in the original—and enough. 
Act IV—Cyrano recites to a piccolo accompaniment. Brave 


183 


N 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


again ! He has all our sympathy. But note ; he hasn’t 
yet started to act. That comes with Act V—the dying 
scene. 

Coquelin used to dogmatise that acting is not art if the 
actor feels. Ars est celare artem. Quite so. But he must 
seem to feel. By all means study every gesture and expres¬ 
sion before a mirror—as Kean did—and turn them on con¬ 
sciously as and when the effect requires ; but if your audience 
detects the mechanism, what then ? You have not concealed 
your art and cannot therefore claim to be artist. Q. E. D. 
This is where Mr. Euclid scores. 

Coquelin gave me the biggest artistic disappointment of 
my life. True, he had played the part, perhaps, a thousand 
times, when first I saw him in it; but that was his fault; 
he was his own manager. An actor should be at his best 
about his fiftieth night; and most, I think, steadily deterior¬ 
ate after two hundred consecutive performances—with 
spasmodic exceptions. 

However, excuses aside, Coquelin didn’t overwhelm me 
and for this reason : although I was seeing the play for the 
first time I knew to a fraction what he would do next; 
I was aware of his elaborate care in the preparation of his 
mechanism and was able to anticipate his every movement— 
to foresee the precise means he would employ to create his 
next effect. It fascinated me. But although I admired 
his cleverness, I forgot the play and Cyrano in studying 
Coquelin. I felt as Casablanca must in watching a game of 
Chess. I noted how exactly the chair had been placed 
and knew to a stagger every pose he would adopt before 
dropping on to it—and I was furious to find myself right 
every time. 

Loraine’s dying scene is excellent, though it seems over 


184 


LETTER NUMBER THIRTY-THREE 


long because of the poverty of the translation. For one 
thing I heartily thank him ; a great rarity in these days ; 
I could hear every word without effort. But he seemed a 
little too precise—never carried away on an inspiration. 

I wonder if the part is really so great after all! 

But you were asking about me. 

I’m too old for Pierrot, but I should like to try the others. 
If I failed it would not be from ignorance of the pitfalls. 

But if you were asking me about the parts I have played 
—I expect you’ll smile—but when I was young I had more 
joy in Claude Melnotte than any I can think of. I mean 
actual joy in the doing of it. The inevitable applause of 
the audience ; the exhilarating effect of being allowed to 
express freely all the primitive and varying emotions, with 
the knowledge that their frank expression is essential to 
the acting of the part: the comedy of Act II, the dignity 
and restraint; the climax of Act IV and then the final 
outburst of Act V. Yes, real joy ! 

Hamlet ? 

I have never played him long enough at a stretch to get 
to the state of enjoyment. For all one may have spent 
months in preparation, ease and confidence in such a part 
require that the actor shall have stood outside himself 
and listened—watched - calculated and experimented in 
collaboration with an audience for weeks before the com¬ 
position can be to his satisfaction. Then comes the process 
of adapting to his limitations, physical and vocal, the effects 
he designs to express and the assimilation of those traits 
of character that contradict his own. This, of course, 
applies to every part, but as Hamlet is the greatest 
these considerations strike one more forcibly in approach¬ 
ing it. 


185 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


Benedick is delightful to play, but memories of Irving 
create diffidence. 

Shylock is easy, though not easy to excel in. I never 
knew a Shylock to fail utterly. 

Of all the parts I would prefer to satisfy myself in I choose 
Macbeth. 

“ Vaulting ambition,” eh 1 

No actor has ever yet achieved it as far as I know— 
Burbage, of course, excepted. 

The ideal part ? 

Shall it be Subjective or Objective ? 

Do you follow me ? 

Shall the play be his story—as Hamlet is ?—or shall he 
obtrude, as Shylock does, into the story of Portia and 
Bassanio ? 

The first may better satisfy the actor’s vanity ; but think 
of the responsibility ! 

Why does Mercutio never fail ? Because he is incidental 
to the story and being most perfectly composed seems greater 
than he is. Romeo is most difficult; he is continually 
overshadowed by Juliet and he must reconcile a dozen 
varying mental attitudes entirely unsympathetic to the 
English estimate of manliness. Yet Romeo is the subjective 
part; the story is his ; Juliet comes into it and swamps it 
and him. 

I would choose to enter unobtrusively and grow to the 
climax. 

In a play of Dumas’ ; Urbain Grandier , I think ; the 
leading part (played by Melingue) was discovered on sentry- 
go and half the Act was over before he came into the action. 
That’s ideal, to my mind, for a start. Then he shall finish 
the Act with some vital sentence—a shock of surprise or 


186 


LETTER NUMBER THIRTY-THREE 


humour. Act II must keep light but vital because Act III 
will be strenuous : some great conflict of emotion culmina¬ 
ting in passion. For example Act III of Othello , if there 
were no Act IV and we had to pass after it straight to the 
Bedchamber. Act the last: death of course. There is 
hardly a great part that doesn’t end in death ; how other 
can it end ? True (Edipus does not die but his end is the 
more terrible. 

I played once a very fine part in a forgotten play of which 
I heard it was said that surely a man never died so happy 
—and that should be true of Hamlet. 

But the public won’t admit that death can be the happy 
end, though individually they know, if happiness there be 
and death is inevitable, that happy death is the only possible. 

The ideal part must be tragic, of course : Pity and Terror. 
Adversity borne cheerfully ; no whining, no sentimentality ; 
an example of courage. 

But the actor hardly puts ethical consideration first. 
Though he knows his Art may be—and should be—a great 
moral force, he does not devote his life to it for such reason. 
The artist suffers an irresistible urge to express some message 
nascent within him, which—though too often as it materialises 
becomes mere self-glorification—had in its inception an 
essence of spiritual beauty. 


187 


LETTER XXXIV 


London 

12 th June , 1910. 

Yes, Redgie, my son, I follow your chemin de penser , as 
you call it; though you have a most weird sense of catena¬ 
tion and employ the ellipse with feminine insouciance. 
But I think I have succeeded in following your wild leaps 
—like the moufflon (isn’t that the little beast’s name ?) 
from crag to crag of solid argument, across the gulfs of 
improbability and the unfordable streams of sheer impossi¬ 
bility. 

You are an idealist, Redgie, but with one foot at least on 
solid ground ; something of a puritan ; much of a dreamer ; 
but, thank God ! nothing of a prig. 

It is strange how complementary you and Marie are to 
each other. She has, so to speak, the other foot firmly 
planted. She is catholic in taste ; no less idealistic yet 
more practical and strangely venturesome. But, no; 
one doesn’t say that of a woman. Women don’t venture ; 
guided by intuition, what would be adventure in a man 
becomes merely fairly safe speculation in a woman. But 
one quality that I most admire in her is that, though she is 
so entirely womanly, she never presumes on her womanhood 
or cheapens it. That is saying much in these times when 
so few of her sex are concerned with upholding its dignity. 
You might not credit it, but I have actually seen a stage¬ 
hand open a door for her ! 

Did I not well to christen her Princess ! 

But for your argument. It seems to amount to this: 
that as the Theatre can only exist as a commercial enter¬ 
prise, it is impossible that the Art of Impersonation should 
survive, since the Public will visit it only to see its favourites; 


188 


LETTER NUMBER THIRTY-FOUR 


and if they personate their admirers may not recognise 
them. 

To this my answer is that the great mass of the Public 
go to the Theatre in the simple frame of mind of the child 
who says : “ Tell me a story.” That is the lure of the 
Theatre for the many. 

But when they are there, in order to hold them, a spell 
must be cast over them ; a spell they can’t analyse and don’t 
understand, which is made up of the personality of the actor 
and very technical skill ; a mixture so subtle that even 
professional critics are unable to disentangle its components 
and continually make the mistake of giving credit to the 
author for what is purely the actor’s work—or belongs to 
his personality—and vice versa. Only recently Sidney 
Carroll, who really seems to have the good of the Theatre 
at heart for all his brutality—which I would readily wel¬ 
come if it were more reasoned (he is too fond of giving us 
his conclusion without stating his premises)—stated that 
acting can be learnt. That’s absurd. It needs no argument. 
It simply can’t be—any more than painting or music can 
be learnt. It may be improved by teaching and experience, 
but if it is not instinctive it can never be acquired. 

The Public don’t know it, but a great actor, when he ap¬ 
pears can—as he always has—triumph over the weaknesses 
of an indifferent play or one so well known as to be banal, 
and draw them to the Theatre simply to see him ! 

Remember the state the Drama had fallen to when Kean 
appeared. 

I think it was not much better after Phelps before Irving 
revived it. 

To-day, though not in such sad case perhaps, it lacks a 
head. 


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LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


Worst of all; think of it at the Restoration when Betterton 
gave it dignity. 

Since Shakespeare formulated it, so to speak, out of 
chaotic elements—without disrespect to Marlowe or the 
other Elizabethans—it has needed the coming of a great 
man no less than five times. 

Betterton in 1660. Garrick, who with all his faults un¬ 
questionably gave it distinction, in 1741. Kean in 1814. 
Irving in 1874. And now we await the fifth. 

In point of time—according to the rule of arithmetical 
progression—he is long overdue. 

The present demand is all for Comedy and we can present 
a polite comedy in quite respectable fashion but even so 
we have no great outstanding figure. 

Hawtrey, Hicks, Du Maurier. 

Hawtrey has always leaned rather towards Farce. 

The great Comedian must be “ the glass of fashion and 
the mould of form ”—the type of his epoch. He must 
epitomise it. The future must be able to look back upon 
him and say : “ He stood for his period.” 

Hawtrey grows old, alas ! and a trifle stout—comfortable¬ 
looking. That does not express 1919. 

Hicks ? 

To my mind, brilliant. I shall never forget his Valentine 
Brown in Quality Street; the delicacy, the finish, the 
humanity. And in Sweet and Twenty (I think it was called) 
at the Vaudeville, a most beautiful performance. Yet even 
he does not typify the Age. He has understanding and sym¬ 
pathy ; but to express a period it is necessary to probe 
to its heart and expose it ennobled—dignified. 

It would be difficult to express the dignity of 1919. 

Perhaps the polished cynicism of Du Maurier best typifies 


190 


LETTER NUMBER THIRTY-FOUR 


its attitude. “ Who cares ? ” would seem to be his motto, 
and his shrug as he watches the curling fume of his cigarette- 
smoke and carelessly flicks away the ash seems to comment, 

“ I don’t! ” 

Charles Mathews stood for his Age : by his art he ex¬ 
pressed it. 

I am assured by one who played with Mathews that x 
Wyndham was but a pale reflection of him ; but Wyndham 
expressed the manners of the end of the Nineteenth Century 
to a nicety. 

Why are those thrones empty ? 

Because actors not content with observing Society— 
their necessary function—claim to be of it; and the Social 
round is stultifying to Art. 

The artist must be untrammelled. 

“ Going into Society ” implies the conforming to rigid 
conventions of conduct and manners entirely unfavourable 
to the bohemian atmosphere where alone inspiration is 
bred and nourished. 

There is no term in common usage more abused than 
bohemianism. » From time to time youthful coteries meet 
and imagine that by adopting certain affectations they can 
create the atmosphere. But bohemianism is an elusive 
emanation of the artistic spirit and can evolve only in un¬ 
consciousness. It is nurtured on single-hearted devotion 
to Art and fostered by the Spirit of Youth. 

“ Whom the Gods love die young ” does not mean that 
those blessed ones shall decease in infancy or in their teens, 
but that the spring of eternal youth shall bubble in their 
hearts even though their patriarchal beards may wag or 
the common house-fly annoy the baldness of their pates. 

But I am rambling and ignoring your letter—Forgive me. 


191 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


It is true that we all need solitude at times. Dostoievsky 
complained that the one real torture of his exile in Siberia 
was that he was never once alone ! 

I find it difficult to believe that I should ever feel your 
companionship irksome, for—like my Father and Chris— 
you have that gift of sympathetic silence that does not 
create the terrifying feeling that it may be broken suddenly 
and inappropriately—as Rupert Brooke’s girl broke it. 

“You came and quacked beside me in the wood. 

“You said, ‘The view from here is very good!’ 

“ You said, * It’s nice to be alone a bit! * 

“ And, ‘ How the days are drawing out! ’ ” you said. 

“You said, ‘The sunset’s pretty, isn’t it?’ 

* * * * * 

“By God! I wish—I wish that you were dead ! ” 

If you remember all you have to tell me and I to ask 
all I want to know we shall have no silence when we meet 
next week. 

But we shan’t remember. 

Do you know that feeling that comes at the end of a job 
when you want to stand still for a few moments but all the 
wheels are whirring relentlessly and you have a sense of guilt 
because you know you are missing things—letting them 
slip by when you should be keeping abreast of them ? 

There’s no time ever to stand still in this world. A 
job done, another should be started without hesitation or 
delay. To break that law is to break faith with oneself— 
which never pays. Of course if Conscience doesn’t apply 
the spur one is quite justified in lazily treading water—Yes, 
I know ; mixed metaphor ! Well, I am swimming the stream 
on horseback. See ! and I don’t know whether I’m Con¬ 
science or the horse. Anyway treading water, metaphori- 


192 


LETTER NUMBER THIRTY-FOUR 


cally, is an exercise that irks me excessively ; but activity 
is useless without direction. 

There is no doubt that I suffer dreadfully from lack of 
concentration. For instance ; I woke this morning repeat¬ 
ing over and over certain lines of Macbeth and coul dn 
get rid of them. A well-ordered brain doesn’t do that. It 
is evidence of vacuity. I could find explanation—or rather, 
invent excuse—but that would be to add dishonesty to 
futility. 

Au revoir, bicn esperL Yours unchangeably, 

Hicks is the mauvais garcon of the English theatre, 
Hawtrey the bon diable and Du Maurier the preux 
chevalier — sans cceur. 

• 


19S 


LETTER XXXV 


London 

24 th July, 1919. 

I don’t say Edmund Kean was the greatest actor England 
ever produced—I have already told you that, in my opinion, 
Richard Burbage must have been that—but he was surely 
the most remarkable. In the parts in which he excelled 
he was probably greater in certain passages even than 
Burbage. As far as I can gather, though he took great 
pains to compose a character, he could not or would not give 
his best w r ork to those phases of it that did not appeal to 
him ; and certain aspects of the great parts—as, for example, 
Macbeth and Hamlet—he was temperamentally incapable 
of rendering. The metaphysical, though not, perhaps, 
beyond his comprehension, was outside his sympathy— 
beyond his range of expression. 

At his house at Rothsay, Isle of Bute, Kean set up, on 
equal pedestals, two statues—to Shakespeare and to Mas¬ 
singer. To me this is eloquent of his mentality. That 
anyone should, for one moment, think of these two play¬ 
wrights together—let alone side by side—is utterly incom¬ 
prehensible. But gratitude, no doubt, leads us into excesses 
as strange as its opposite; and Kean owed much to 
Massinger. 

What Garrick had done in 1741 Kean did in 1814. Both 
introduced in the contemporary Theatre a new and natural 
method ; but whereas Garrick merely modernised, Kean 
humanized. 

Garrick found the Stage occupied by mouthing ranters ; 
he adopted a polite method, in keeping with the artificiality 
of his period with its affectations of snuff-box, lace kerchief 
and cravat, cane, Louis’ heels and bag-wig. He “ ex- 


194 


LETTER NUMBER THIRTY-FIVE 


purgated ” Shakespeare’s plays, at the same time elaborating 
certain scenes with a graceful pen and a style not without 
wit, easy, flowing, well suited to the fancy of his time. He 
cut the vulgarities and made all nice —I use the word in its 
Eighteenth Century sense. 

The days of the great orators and soldiers when Kean 
appeared were more robust. 

Kean, probably, could not write at all—dialogue, I mean ; 
his letters do not suggest it—though he was far from illiter¬ 
ate. His correspondence was sprinkled—somewhat too 
liberally—with classical quotation : but this was a literary 
vice of his age. 

Garrick was praised for the grace of his literary efforts by 
no less an authority than Doctor Johnson, whom, though 
Garrick’s devoted friend and admirer, we dare not suspect 
of partiality in such regard. 

Garrick, I feel sure, colloquialised the masterpieces. 

Kean, with his perfect instinct for the Art, qualified 
by the intense suffering he had undergone—an essential 
part of an actor’s training for the grand roles —humanized 
all. 

In a word : Garrick’s touch was light, quick, mercurial. 

“ He never could stand still,” said George the Third. 

Kean appealed by his sonority and dignity. Of his 
Shylock Douglas Jerrold said it was “ impressive as a chapter 
of Genesis.” 

Garrick’s great advantage was in the fact that he had 
humour. 

Kean had none. No man who had a sense of humour 
could drink himself to death. I once knew a man, said 
to have great sense of humour, who did it, but his was really 
a sense of fun—mistaken by many for the same thing. He 


195 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


was an inveterate practical joker and in his cups would 
indulge all kinds of curious fancies ; for instance, he would 
chase his wife round the dining-room table brandishing an 
open razor. I .surprised such a scene on one occasion, 
the poor lady was my god-mother. Her husband died 
eventually of cirrhosis of the liver. I never thought he was 
even funny. 

The story of the triumph of Edmund Kean at Drury 
Lane on the 26th of January, 1814, is well knowm. Briefly 
the Committee of Management of Old Drury were at their 
w r its’ end for a Star. Business was appalling. The pro¬ 
vinces w r ere scoured for a new' leading actor. Huddart 
(father of the celebrated Leading Lady, Mrs. Warner) 
had just failed—as Shylock, I think. As a last resort 
“ Mr Kean, of the Theatre Royal, Exeter,” w as billed, and 
took London by storm. 

Kean came to London fully equipped ; he had no dreadful 
first performance to agonise through. All his parts were 
studied, tested by a hundred repetitions in all sorts of 
places—barns and w'ayside inns as well as theatres—and 
before all kinds of audiences ; and to London playgoers he 
presented a new—a human Shylock. Before that night 
they had experience only of glowering elocutionists bound 
by the convention that the actor must always present his 
full face to the public and never abandon the classic pose. 
Kean impersonated ; he discovered to his audience the marvel 
of Shakespeare’s intuitive knowledge of human nature and 
his genius in exposition and thereby made manifest his 
own. 

It is on record that, when the curtain fell for the first 
interval, a large number of the occupants of the Pit—there 
were but fifty there, all told—dashed into the street and 


196 


LETTER NUMBER THIRTY-FIVE 


endeavoured to persuade in some eases actually coerced 
—the passers-by to return with them into the theatre. 

I am not going to pretend to criticise Kean’s Shy lock. 
In some respects I don’t believe it was a just interpretation. 
He played for sympathy. Now Shylock cannot help win¬ 
ning sympathy however he is played ; the Christians in the 
play behave so caddishly that the Jew is certain to show up 
as a dignified, even noble figure by contrast. But to act 
the part deliberately for the purpose of obtaining sympathy 
is, in my judgment, to make sure of forfeiting some of it. 
But let that pass. 

Kean’s greatest triumph was, perhaps, as Othello, a 
performance that beyond all question has never been ap¬ 
proached since. But his failing, to which I have referred, 
marred in some degree the opening Act for in the speech 
before the Senate he would not exert the full strength of his 
intelligence and his powers. Ilis voice was rough and 
raucous in the middle and upper register, though wonderfully 
melodious in the low er tones. He found small opportunities 
in the narration of Othello’s history of his wooing for use 
of his most effective notes and contented himself w ith the 
trick of changing from rhetoric to conversation in the final 
couplet—which w on its recognition from the public. The 
London playgoer of those days w as critical, he knew the 
text and applauded points, he was appreciative of skil¬ 
fully employed technique. But in Act III and thence to 
the final catastrophe he was gripped, held and finally carried 
off his feet by such a whirlwind of passion, such masterly 
interpretation as eclipsed all memory of other histrionic 
achievement. 

I should like to give you detail but I want to show you 
the scope of Kean’s work, and if I start talking of any one 


197 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


of his great performances I shall not have space or time 
to-day to complete the outline of the whole. 

His most popular impersonation was Richard the Third : 
with this he drew the largest sums to the treasury. Once 
he was induced to play the part three times in one week ! 
He would never appear more than four times, and 
only upon that one occasion more than twice in the same 
character. 

How wise ! 

He refused to do this again for the excellent reason that 
he “ would not stale his art for any committee.” If 
modern managers and actors would appreciate all that this 
implies we might hope for some better acting and more 
interest on the part of the Public in the qualities of the actor’s 
work ; but this is only one of the death-blows that com¬ 
mercial considerations have dealt the Art. 

Another great performance of Kean’s was as Sir Giles 
Overreach in Massinger’s A New Way to Pay Old Debts ; 
and it must have been wonderful indeed to have created the 
sensation it did, for of all the obvious, ill-drawn characters 
Sir Giles is surely the worst because the most pretentious. 
The play itself is like nothing in nature ; the verse halts, 
the plot is dull, the drama contemptible. There is not a 
quotable line and, to my mind, the whole thing is unadulter¬ 
ated balderdash. How anyone ‘dares mention the name of 
Massinger in the same breath with Shakespeare is, to me, 
amazing. The play has lived, then, solely because Sir 
Giles affords scope for a display of epileptic passion. And 
in this Kean easily eclipsed all others. Mrs. Glover fainted 
on the stage with horror at his fury. The old actor, 
Munden, aghast, gasped “ Is it possible ? ” It is recorded, 
too, that the actor of Wilford in The Iron Chest was similarly 


198 


LETTER NUMBER THIRTY-FIVE 


struck speechless with terror by the concentrated hate 
Kean expressed in the part of Sir Edward Mortimer. No 
one has since been able to instil life into this dreary play. 
Luke, in Massinger’s The City Madam , he made peculiarly 
his own—as Macready was to learn later—and Zanga, a 
sort of blend of Othello and Iago, in Dr. Young’s The 
Revenge was among Kean’s favourite and most successful 
roles. 

Most of the prints of Kean (other than the well-known 
one as Richard) picture him as Coriolanus and I expect 
he was superb in his delivery of the passionate invective : 

“ You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate. 

“ As reek o’ the rotten fens.” 

As Macbeth, with his qualifications and technical accom¬ 
plishment, he could not fail to have been magnificent in the 
Murder Scene ; yet, as I have said, he missed something of 
the mysticism of the character—the introspection—psycho¬ 
analysis, as would be said to-day. Should it not be psy- 
chsenalysis ? He would miss that sense, in the last Act 
that Fate was hounding him. I can see him facing boldly 
all Siward’s forces, but it is not Macduff and the Scottish 
thanes, nor yet Northumberland’s army, that conquered 
the guilty King; he succumbed to an element more dread¬ 
ful, and that dread—since the actor lacked the metaphysical 
sense—it was outside his range to convey. 

Hamlet, too, was a disappointment but the scene with 
Ophelia was very beautiful. No doubt he rose magnifi¬ 
cently to the Play Scene, but the soliloquies would irk him. 
Graceful he was, yet hardly “the sweet Prince,” consciously 
exercising fascination, yet not perhaps “ the glass of fashion 
and the mould of form.” 

His Romeo was remarkable only for the splendid fury 


199 


o 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


of his onslaught upon Tybalt (he was a magnificent swords¬ 
man) and for his passionate abandon in the Banishment 
Scene. 

He stood “ like a statue of lead ” in the Balcony Scene, 
but in the Tomb (he used the Garrick version) he gave “a 
noble and powerful display.” 

Opinions vary about his Kitely in Ben Jonson’s Every Man 
in His Humour ; but there is no doubt, I fear, that Kean 
failed as Abel Drugger—in Garrick’s adaptation, renamed 
The Tobacconist , of Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist. The 
correspondence on this subject between Mrs. Garrick and 
Kean is one of the stalest of theatrical jokes : 

“ Dear Sir, You cannot play Abel Drugger, Yours, etc., 
Eva Garrick. 

“ Dear Madam, I know it, Yours, etc., Edmund Kean.” 

So he may have had some humour after all. 

Mrs. Garrick was now an old lady of ninety-two ; after 
his triumph she invited Kean to her house in Adelphi Terrace 
and presented to him the stage regalia worn by her husband 
as Richard. They became great friends, but quarrelled 
violently at intervals, notably in regard to certain readings 
in Hamlet. 

Rallied by his friend on his failure as Abel, Kean asked : 
“ Could your Davy sing ? ” His widow answered “ No.” 
“ Then,” said Kean, “ I have at least one advantage over 
him. I can.” He was, in fact, a sweet singer and would 
spend hours alone with his piano. 

Amongst Kean’s triumphs was the repetition of Betterton’s 
stupendous effort in galvanizing into life the artificial charac¬ 
ter of Alexander the Great in Nathaniel Lee’s tragedy The 
Rival Queens , a feat no other actor had satisfactorily accom¬ 
plished since Betterton’s time. I have a copy of a week’s 


200 


LETTER NUMBER THIRTY-FIVE 


receipts taken from the books of the old Theatre Royal, 
Hull, which I enclose.* You will see that he did not spare 
himself. Its chief interest is in the light it throws upon 
the relative drawing power of the plays and in the order 
in which he elected to perform them. Richard the Third , 
you will note, though usually his most popular part, was 
almost the least attractive and Alexander no doubt the 
greatest physical effort since he reserved that for the Satur¬ 
day night. 

This subject of Kean’s acting is inexhaustible, an endless 
one for speculation. What was he really like ? 

Read his Life by Hawkins (much prejudiced in his favour) 
by Molloy (more circumstantial, founded for the most part 
on old documents) and by Barry Cornwall (who knew him 
personally and was not too partial) and even then you won’t 
be able to decide. Read Hazlitt and George Henry Lewes’ 
criticisms of his performances ; above all note what they do 
not say. From that you may deduce much. 

I must not write more now. As I told you I am tinkering 
again—a costume play this time of Powder period. I 
like it, but the dialogue lacks distinction. You shall hear 
more of it—if it prove worth while. 

When do you return home ? 


* The Theatre Royal, Humber Street, Hull (opened in 1810). 
Edmund Kean’s Week. 


1819. 



£ 

s. 

d. 

Monday, January 4th .. 

Richard 111 .. 

96 

14 

6 

Tuesday „ 

5th .. 

Hamlet 

136 

0 

0 

Wednesday „ 

6th .. 

A New Way to pay Old Debts 

151 

0 

0 

Thursday „ 

7th .. 

The Iron Chest 

96 

0 

0 

Friday „ 

8th .. 

Othello 

114 

0 

0 

Saturday „ 

9th .. 

Alexander the Great .. 

210 

10 

0 




£804 

4 

6 


201 








LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


I am stuck in town ; no sea for me this year, and, to my 
mind, no holiday is one without it. 

Do I seem luke-warm in praising Kean ? I am not so 
really. There is no doubt he was a genius, one of the very 
few who have ever acted. 

A genius is one who discovers an elemental truth. 

Think of all discovers may mean and you’ll get my thought, 
for to discover is not only to find but to expose to view— 
to expound — to express — to flash to the intelligence of 
others. 

That was how Kean excelled them all. 

Do you pass through London on your way home ? 

Yours, 


202 


LETTER XXXVI 


London 

10th August , 1919. 

You remember Pepys’ reference to Beck (Rebecca) 
Marshall — her sister Ann was also on the stage—whom he 
quotes as being the first “ female actress.” I had always 
thought this distinction belonged to Mrs. Saunderson (who 
became Mrs. Betterton) but I have now discovered that the 
honour is claimed for Mrs. Hughes (Prince Rupert’s mistress) 
and that the part in which she appeared was Desdemona. 
The occasion was celebrated by a Prologue—“ To introduce 
the first woman that came to act on the stage, in the tragedy 
called The Moor of Venice ; ” the date, the 8th of December, 
1660 ; and the management Killigrew’s at the Vere Street 
Theatre in Clare Market. 

But Mistress Hughes is not profoundly interesting; 
Ianthe, as Pepys called Betterton’s wife, is —because she 
was the wife of Betterton. 

It is difficult to get Infallible Tom, as Betterton was nick¬ 
named, into correct perspective. 

You must remember that the Revolution having swept 
away the Elizabethan Theatre, a new model had to be 
sought in the new era that succeeded the Restoration. The 
Art of that period was moulded on the Greek and the Theatre 
did not escape the influence. 

A resonant voice, correct features and a graceful though 
inelastic pose I take to have been the first qualifications of 
the tragic actor of that epoch. 

Thomas Betterton, who is praised for his manners and 
his scholarship at a time when the players were very low 
in the social scale and had, most of them, other occupations, 
generally of not very distinguished sort and often menial. 


203 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


was no doubt far beyond his fellows intellectually and shone 
accordingly. He was the son of a cook in the royal house¬ 
hold and was apprenticed to a book-seller. It is said of 
him—as it was said of Garrick—that he became fully com¬ 
petent to play all the great parts with less than three years 
experience. 

It is incredible—in both cases. 

But, anyhow, Betterton was the first actor of whose per¬ 
sonal dignity as a man we have any precise record and it 
was he whose performances revived popular interest in the 
Shakespeare Drama. 

Between Betterton and Kemble came Colley Cibber and 
James Quin and it would seem safe to assume that the 
tradition Betterton followed—or rather created—was even 
more stiff, more unbending, more formal and more exact 
than that which Kemble adopted, for the tendency is always 
to relax. But we have precise information as to Kemble’s 
method and if he had more elasticity than Quin—Quin 
than Cibber and Cibber than Betterton—Well, God help 
Betterton ! He must have been a marble effigy. 

But so it certainly was not ! 

Vanbrugh, Wycherley, Farquhar and Congreve were the 
favourite authors of Restoration days ; the Town and the 
Court flocked to performance of their social satires, and 
the Court of the Merry Monarch was very human. That 
Betterton lured it and the Town to see his presentations 
of the masterpieces proves that he had extraordinary gifts 
of insight and imagination to win and hold them. 

Cibber, who was no mean critic, was his ardent champion 
and what he writes is confirmed by John Downes (for forty 
years prompter at the theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields) by 
Pepys and by Sir Richard Steele who wrote in The Taller :— 


204 


LETTER NUMBER THIRTY-SIX 


“ I have hardly a notion that any performer of antiquity 
could surpass the action of Mr. Betterton in any of the occa¬ 
sions in which he has appeared on our stage.” (Do please 
admire this English.) 

It was agreed by those who saw both actors that as 
Hamlet and Othello Betterton far exceeded Garrick. He 
was instructed in his reading and the business of Hamlet 
by Sir William Davenant, said to be the natural son of Shakes¬ 
peare himself. 

Shakespeare left two daughters : Susan, who married 
John Hall, by whom she had one daughter who left no heir, 
and Judith, who married Thomas Quiney, by whom she 
had three sons who left no heirs. 

Thus Davenant—if this theory of his birth be exact— 
was the last remnant of Shakespeare’s blood. He was 
Knighted by Charles the First in 1643. Milton saved his 
life in the days of Cromwell’s usurpation and, to return the 
compliment, Davenant saved Milton’s life on the Restora¬ 
tion in 1660. 

Sir William Davenant obtained from King Charles the 
Second the Charter under which our National Theatre of 
Drury Lane still exists. 

There was an old actor of the Blackfriars’ Theatre, named 
Joseph Taylor, the successor to Burbage in the part of Ham¬ 
let, from whom Davenant learned much and who probably 
assisted instruction of Betterton ; he could remember the 
precise directions of Shakespeare himself. 

Of the result Downes says : “ His exact performance of 
it (the part of Hamlet) gained him esteem and reputation 
superlative to all other plays ; ” and Betterton continued 
to act the part until he was seventy-five. 

What appears to have impressed his critics most is the 


205 


s 

LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 

fact that he did not rant on the appearance of the Ghost, 
which is caustic comment on the performances of his con¬ 
temporaries. 

But Betterton acted Sir Toby Belch with equal effect 
and success. This I take to be the greatest tribute to his 
powers. 

He was not tall, blunt of feature, with small eyes and 
a voice “ low and grumbling,” and, though of more strength 
than melody, he could “ tune it to any climax.” 

Cibber speaks of the “ fierce and flashing fire ” which 
he threw into Hotspur. Also he says of his Brutus :— 
“ like an unheeding rock he repelled the foam of Cassius.” 

Now all this is very fine, but I want you to remember 
that it is also recorded that Betterton, who was short and 
tubby and of most unprepossessing countenance, in declaim¬ 
ing used his right hand only for gesticulation, while he 
kept the chubby thumb of his left tucked between the buttons 
afihis waistcoat. 

There was but small attempt to dress the parts in char¬ 
acter, and, though Betterton was the first to introduce 
scenery, production was of the most primitive. 

Don’t you agree with me that the performances must 
have been little better than mere Readings, with but the 
faintest attempt to create illusion ? 

I suspect they were wonderful character Recitals. 

Such art might be acquired by training natural aptitude 
in two or three years ; whereas, as Irving said, there needs 
at least twenty years to acquire mastery in the technique 
of acting, and even then all is never learnt . 

Betterton, like Garrick—save for a very brief training— 
and Macready, started in the leading parts. 

Betterton lived until 1710, he died almost on the stage 


206 


LETTER NUMBER THIRTY-SIX 


after playing Melantius in Beaumont and Fletcher’s The 
Maid's Tragedy. 

Cibber, who was nearly forty when Betterton died, 
and lived to see Garrick in his best days, speaking of him 
in the great Shakespearean roles y says : “ Should I tell 
you that all whom you may have seen since Betterton’s 
day have fallen far short of him it would still give you no 
idea of his particular excellence.” 

Macklin bridged the gap between Betterton and Kemble ; 
while three others formed arches, so to speak, under the 
span—Cibber, Quin and Garrick. 

Charles Macklin (born M‘Laughlin) was twenty at the 
time of Betterton’s death, if some of his biographies are 
to be believed ; others assert that he was not born 
until 1700. He was Garrick’s mentor and, but for the 
handicap of a pronounced Irish brogue, would, no doubt, 
have taken a very high place in our theatrical history 
as an exponent of the Classic Drama. He it was who 
rescued Shylock from ridicule, though Kean was the 
first to abandon the tradition of the red wig. Macklin 
was also the first to dress Macbeth in suitable attire. We 
know Zoffany’s portrait of Garrick as Macbeth in bag-wig 
and scarlet coat. 

As late as 1788 Macklin appeared in the same night as 
Shylock and as Sir Archy MacSarcasm in Love-a-la-Mode 
of which he was the author. But the part in which he was 
most celebrated—after Shylock—he created in every sense, 
for it was he who wrote The Man of the World and therein 
acted Sir Pertinax MacSychophant, a part in which he so 
excelled that his performance was not even approached 
for nearly a century—when Samuel Phelps played it. 

It is interesting to note that this remarkable old man. 


207 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


who in his middle age appeared as Osric, Mercutio and 
Touchstone—the First Gravedigger, Fluellen and Polonius, 
Malvolio being his only Shakespearean leading part and 
Iago his only tragic one, first acted Macbeth—at Covent 
Garden—when he was eighty-three (or seventy-three if 
he was not born until 1700) and as Richard the Third three 
years later ! 

Of the others I have named, Cibber, who lived to be 
eighty-six, was more remarkable as a writer, a wit and a 
man of Fashion than as an actor ; though he wrote and 
played the celebrated character of Lord Foppington. It 
was said of him that by perseverance alone he attained his 
eminence—he was for awhile Manager of Drury Lane—but 
a man does not excel in so many branches of Art and business 
without very peculiar abilities. His Sir John Brute in 
The Provoked Wife was much praised, for he acted it as a 
gentleman ! But to me the author of She Would and She 
Wouldn't needs no stronger recommendation. Its wit, 
its intrigue, its characterisation and its joyous humour 
are a priceless possession. How sad that our Stage has 
lost the art of properly interpreting such masterpieces. 

James Quin, the ponderous, took no thought of the art 
of characterisation. He was a thunderer pure and simple, 
yet his reading was always logical, clear and incisive as well 
as dignified even to impressiveness. But he lives in memory 
chiefly as the perfect Falstaff, for which his huge figure— 
he weighed twenty stone—fitted him ideally. He played 
this part in his own undisguised personality—as indeed, he 
did all parts. His amiability and excellent humour made 
him much loved and though the Public forsook him often 
again and again he won them back. It was said of him 
that he would be “ long remembered with pleasure for his 


208 


LETTER NUMBER THIRTY-SIX 


Brutus and his Cfcto,” which, the critic added, it was hoped 
would “ help forgetfulness of his Richard and his Lear.” 
On the whole his art was on a superior plane to Macklin’s 
and he reigned as King of the Theatre until Garrick de¬ 
throned him. 

There, I have done ! 

I believe you asked about these fellows simply to pull 
my leg. Because I have my own ideas of the interpreta¬ 
tion of the Classic Drama you think to pulverize me by men¬ 
tion of the great names of the past. But they don’t 
frighten me ; they are all old acquaintances. I often think 
of them—as men, not as monumental abstractions—and I 
don’t believe they were any more flawless than bloodless. 

Quin and Macklin were especially human in their different 
ways. Quin was something of a great gentleman, a wit 
and a swordsman of exceptional skill, Macklin almost the 
wild Irish boy who might have been a model for Lever with 
all the virtues and the failings of the type. 

So the American actors, I see, have struck, twenty-five 
theatres closed suppose w'e may expect our Actors’ 
Union to declare a strike in sympathy. 

The commercial men have it all in their hands this Autumn 
and their plans are made. A man I know is paying £550 
a week and thirty-five per cent, of all receipts beyond that for 
a London theatre. Such terms are strangulation. 

Everyone is on holiday but the waiting crowds for 
Chu-Chin-Chow were never greater. 

Yours amazedly. 


209 


LETTER XXXVII 


London 

23 rd August , 1919. 

You are kind to say you find interest in my sketches of 
the old actors, though I am sorry you think I “ bestow 
praise grudgingly.” I wonder if you guess what is in my 
mind. 

Remember this : but for accident the genius even of 
Kean would never have come to light. May there not have 
been many, before his time and since—though circumstances 
are all against it in our day—whose genius no lucky accident 
has revealed ? 

One day I will give you my definition of what constitutes 
the truly great actor—his essential qualities and require¬ 
ments. I think then you will understand what I am driving 
at. 

Meanwhile, as you ask me, I will try to continue my 
sketches though the material is not so interesting. 

Lord Byron, who was a member of the Committee of 
Management of Drury Lane Theatre, said of the actors of 
his day that George Frederick Cooke was the most natural ; 
Kemble the most supernatural—he meant no doubt, above 
the commonplace-natural—and Kean the medium between 
the two. 

There is no doubt that Cooke was great; he was a genius 
sodden with drink—more drunken than Kean ever became ; 
never at his greatest until he was drunk and never re¬ 
maining throughout a performance at his top form, because 
if he started properly drunk he would finish so improperly 
drunk as to be incoherent. 

The influence of alcohol on acting deserves a monograph. 

Of the Stars in their order, as I have detailed them to you, 


210 


LETTER NUMBER THIRTY SEVEN 


I told you that Betterton, Garrick and Maeready started 
in leading parts. I believe this is artistically a great dis¬ 
advantage. 

William Charles Maeready, who was intended for the Bar, 
abandoned that career to take a share in the Management 
of his father’s theatre in Manchester ; not from inclination 
but from filial duty, owing to his father’s distresses. It 
seems to have given him a grudge against the Theatre, which 
he never forgave. 

Macklin, by the way, obtained for Maeready Senior his 
first London engagement. That old man, you see, almost 
links Betterton with our own times—my times, that is ; 
though Maeready had retired he was still living when I was 
born. 

Maeready started in Birmingham as Romeo and played 
all the great roles for forty years. He became Manager of 
Covent Garden and Drury Lane Theatres. He stood alone, 
pre-eminent in the profession, after the death of Kean. 
His nod was law', his disapproval was damnation—and 
he was hard as the nether mill-stone. 

But his acting ? 

“ Kean the most intensely human ; Kemble the most 
severely classical; Maeready the most romantic.” 

We have talked of the meaning of romantic ; the writer 
of the above in a magazine whose name I forget, probably 
used the word as we have agreed to understand romantique. 

That most exemplary paterfamilias was surely never 
romanesque. It is enormously to his credit that he over¬ 
came certain natural disadvantages. His height was five 
feet seven inches, his hair was light and his eyes blue, yet 
capable of great expression. Of his impersonation of 
Beverley in The Gamester , a critic remarked that he would 


211 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


have been excellent “but for the unaccommodating dis¬ 
position of nature in the formation of his face.” 

Macready was intensely in earnest: his success was 
achieved by unremitting toil. Fanny Kemble said he had 
no ear for verse. I am sure he had no sense of humour. 

It is on record that his Benedick was appalling; though 
a crowd of sycophants gave his acting the credit that 
belongs properly to the author. 

He had a magnificent voice for a declamatory passage, 
a frame of iron and, I surmise, no nerves. 

He would have made his first appearance in London as 
Luke in Massinger’s play The City Madam , expurgated and 
re-christened Riches , but for the fear of challenging comparison 
with Kean. 

He played Iago to Kean and Kean “ walked round him ” ; 
but that is nothing. The Othello who lets Iago be remem¬ 
bered is not Othello. 

The two great faults recorded against Macready are that 
he was not poetic (How then would he be romantique ?) 
and that he did not personate. If these indictments 
be just he was no Shakespearean actor—could not have 
been. 

His great successes with the public were as Claude 
Melnotte, Richelieu, Yirginius and Werner. 

He was the original Claude and continued to play him 
till he was sixty. It is difficult to imagine the part done 
in his slow and ponderous way. I suspect the play itself— 
then quite a new type—was the real attraction, together 
with the Pauline of Helen Faucit. Pauline is by far the 
better part and Helen Faucit, by all accounts, was fine in 
it, and Macready inordinately jealous of her. 

Then Bulwer Lytton wrote Richelieu for Macready, one 


212 


LETTER NUMBER THIRTY-SEVEN 


of the greatest acting vehicles ever conceived and, to my 
mind, almost a great play. Modern critics won’t allow this, 
but then very few of them have seen it acted. It hasn’t 
been for over thirty years. Such performances as there 
have been were mere travesties of a great part. 

Virginias of Sheridan Knowles was also originated by 
Macready. Another magnificent acting chance and I 
should say his most satisfying effort. His death scene is 
spoken of as especially beautiful. 

The character of Werner in Byron’s 44 ill-written play ” 
as William Archer calls it, is a study in melancholy and no 
doubt well fitted his sombre spirit. It was German in 
origin, no doubt, like The Stranger of Kotzebue. 

In Shakespeare his most popular performances were 
probably Lear and Macbeth, by reason of his enormous 
physical strength. 

His Macbeth is spoken of as lacking kingly dignity ; 
however his first Act was impressive and his last immense 
in its force. If he did steal in to murder Duncan 44 with 
crouching form and stealthy step ” the reading is not 
unwarranted. 

Kean saw ’ 44 in a flash ” the whole meaning of a character— 
Coleridge said that to see him act was 44 like reading Shakes¬ 
peare by flashes of lightning ”—he became imbued with its 
spirit and could commit no psychological error in its delinea¬ 
tion. Macready did Kean the justice to admit so much; 
adding that when his intuition failed no amount of study 
enabled him to correct his conception. 

I wonder if he intended this as derogation. I don’t 
feel it so. The truth about a character does strike one in a 
flash as a complete conception : it can’t be put together like 
a jig-saw puzzle ; it would fit too accurately and lack w’hat 


213 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


I might call the ragged edges of nature—its contradictions 
and inconsistencies. 

Macready considered Kemble 44 greatly over-rated.” 
There, as you know, I cordially agree with him. 

In proof of Macready’s industry I recall that in his diary 
he admits that he was fifty-seven before he satisfied himself 
as Iago. He never tired of striving to improve his Hamlet. 
As Othello he failed, wanting 44 majesty of character,” a 
quality more deeply ingrained than mere dignity of diction 
and bearing, which, no doubt, he had to the full—in repose. 
He was, I suspect, a man too anxious about his personal 
dignity to be entirely dignified. Majestic is no word for 
him. 

He was much reproved for ranting. 

Macready was an extremely selfish actor, which, as I have 
said of others, is the strongest proof that he lacked the essen¬ 
tial qualities of greatness. 

There can be very few living who witnessed his farewell 
performance in 1851, the year of the Great Exhibition, which 
doubtless had similar effect on theatrical business to the 
opening of the Earl’s Court Exhibition thirty years later 
and of The White City in more recent times. 

Macready upheld the dignity of our profession while he 
was in it; though he was not too kind in writing about it 
after his retirement. But conditions were very different 
in his day. There were no long runs and Managers were 
sorely put to it to find new plays of a dignified type. 

I have at last seen Abraham Lincoln and quite understand 
its success ; it is deserved. I won’t say it is a fine play 
because it is not a play at all, but it’s a very fine part. Some 
of the audience when I was there loved it; one near me w as 
bored to tears. I enjoyed it in spite of the terrible young 


214 


LETTER NUMBER THIRTY-SEVEN 


lady who mumbled through the unnecessary Chorus and— 
excepting one man in a series of small parts and two old 
actresses—the utter amateurishness of a Company of earnest 
novices. The mounting quite satisfied me, substantiating 
my theory that the practicabilities in scenery are the first 
essential, the rest can be done by lighting, furniture and 
suggestion and the avoidance of anything wrong, I mean 
the discordant or incongruous. The actor is little—Lin¬ 
coln stood six feet four inches—awkward, but not ungainly 
in the way I picture Lincoln ; he edged along like a crab, 
Lincoln should move with a swinging slouch. He was 
ardent when he should have been impassive—romantic 
when mere commonplace would have made double the effect; 
but the part carried him. It was the Author’s triumph. 

I have been trying to think of the ideal actor for Lincoln 
and I feel sure there is none who would do it better than 
Herbert Lomas. Do you know his work ? 

Not so many years ago this company would have been 
most severely dealt with by Pit and Press for making no 
attempt to speak American dialect. Lincoln was frankly 
Belfast-Irish. 

Yes, my engagement is over. I must admit the part 
was amiability itself; no effort, nothing at all to act, but 
entirely sympathetic and agreeable. If one is reduced to 
doing that sort of thing for a living, that was quite the 
most agreeable sort of thing one could wish to do. 

Yours resignedly, 


215 


p 


LETTER XXXVIII 


London 

4th September , 1919. 

Who was the critic who said : “This new writer will take 
her seat among the immortals ? ” Had he said “ grow 
her wings ” or “ wear her halo ”—Well. But “ take her 
seat! ” Where would she take it ?—and would she sit 
on it when she got there ?—and why ?—and what advantage? 
and do immortals sit, anyway ? Very lazy of them! 
Why don’t they get busy ? Do they sit and write ?—I 
mean : would she ?—and why write if she were immortal ? 
Anyhow I don’t see the necessity. I don’t want to be 
immortal if I should have to sit and write all the time. The 
advantage—or one of them—I should say, would be that 
one would never be so tired as to want to sit, but just run 
round all the time being immortal. 

Don’t you think most critics are inflated asses ? 
They get so puffed up in the knowledge that they are going 
to be printed that they think people will swallow any bilge 
it may please them to emit; and most people gulp it down 
simply and solely because it’s in print. Asses ! 

I’m afraid modern poetry is too profound for me. I 
read your friend K-’s verses, but I just don’t under¬ 

stand them. They are nicely rounded—have a pretty 
lilt and the writer is evidently full ol contrition for some¬ 
thing he has done—I can’t quite grasp what—for which 
he thinks God needs propitiation. He obviously conceives 
God as very narrow and misunderstanding, needing to have 
motives explained, or He may be in danger of misjudgment. 
To me it sounds very like insulting the Intelligence that 
created him—but, as I say, it has a pretty lilt. 

Vandal, aren’t I ? not to be able to appreciate verse just 


216 



LETTER NUMBER THIRTY-EIGHT 


because it is verse, without looking for some thought that 
I feel is happier for being expressed in that form. 

And here, you say, is Marie—who is in an engagement, 
mark you !—asking : “ where is Content ? ” 

I can tell her where it is not in once : and that is anywhere 
she may seek it. Content is one of those things that just 
happens. You find yourself in it—if you ever do—without 
premeditation : in a few happy moments each of which is 
worth paying for in years. I think they generally lie in 
giving and seeing joy of the gift in a loved one’s eyes. The 
supreme moment of content is in giving the soul where 
it is welcome. There is perfection. 

“ A state of being ” ? Hardly. The moments are not 
long enough. Yet they endure for an appreciable time ; 
they are not mere flashes ; their radiance illumines years. 
Real content once known does not leave the void you ima¬ 
gine ; it is not a mere “ phantasmal essence,” which implies 
unreality—a dream—a will o’ the wisp. One may miss 
it altogether, but to know one moment of it compensates 
for years of suffering and its memory redeems even a lonely 
future from utter blankness. 

God fits the burden to the strength of the back that must 
bear it, and if we elect to shoulder burdens that were never 
meant for us we are fools and deserve the fractured vertebrae 
we shall probably get, for we are merely conniving at, aiding 
and abetting, the selfishness of another—who probably 
jeers at us for our pains. Self-sacrifice is not a duty because 
it is unpleasant; but it becomes a duty when its object is 
just and the burden to be borne, though too heavy for the 
shoulder that struggles with it, may yet be within our 
capacity. 

But you asked me a question. 


217 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


Is Blank Verse an aid or a hindrance to Acting ? 

Neither ; if you accept my definition of Acting as the 
work of a skilled and technically accomplished professor 
of the art of Impersonation. To him the delivery of verse 
is as easy as prose. But the effect on an audience will be 
different. In a verse play, just because the spectator will 
be more impressed by the dignity and poetry of the author’s 
diction, he will imagine that the acting is better. It is 
considered a greater achievement to excel as Juliet than as 
Rosalind only because it is more impressive. The measure 
of skill required is probably equal; but the audience will, 
in reality, be swayed by the qualities of the personality 
of the actor (I hate the word actress and the clumsiness of 
authoress—no one suggests doctoress—I should have said 
artist). To some the comedy temperament may appeal 
more ; others may be more influenced by the grandeur of 
tragedy. But these considerations only cloud the simple 
issue. Bad acting—if it is acting when it is bad—may 
pass in a prose play—even fit ; never in blank verse. 

To have beautiful words to speak, whether in prose or 
verse, must be an aid to acting—if they do not cloud the 
thought. Most writers of verse are so obsessed with the 
beauty of form in expression that the thought moves 
sluggishly. 

Shakespeare avoids this—generally. He breaks up the 
verse into short vital sentences (see Hamlet , scenes 1 and 3, 
Act I. Macbeth Act II) that are full of life and movement: 
if he moralises the rapid change of thought and evolution 
of idea afford scope for facial acting. His prose is often 
as poetical as his most beautiful verse ; there is no finer 
poetry in the language than “ What a piece of work is 
Man ! ” 


218 


LETTER NUMBER THIRTY EIGHT 


Shakespeare never loses virility by employing verse form ; 
all others I have read sacrifice it entirely on occasion. 

You speak of the “ rhythmical crescendo ” of verse as 
an aid to effect; but what of the rhythmical crescendo of 
prose ? Consider : 14 Hath not a Jew eyes ? ” 

The love duets of Romeo and Juliet and of Lorenzo and 
Jessica owe their beauty to their form; the poetic imagery of 
the thoughts demand expression in verse and could not have 
been so exquisitely tender and delicately passionate in prose. 

The dramatic effect—suspension in the emotional atmos¬ 
phere—of the sudden change to prose as the Clerk reads 
Bellario’s letter is a masterstroke of technique and 
independent of the acting. 

The genius in Marc Antony’s Oration is magnified by the 
author’s dexterity in having written Brutus’ oration, that 
precedes it, in prose. 

Shakespeare can be just as pithy or humorous in verse 
as in prose, and, though he usually turns on prose for broad 
comedy, he can also accomplish it in verse as for example :— 
“I see a voice now will I to the chink 
“To spy an I can hear my Thisbe’s face.” 

But I am answering more than your question, which needed 
but the one word : Neither. 

If proof of our favourite author’s extraordinary genius 
were required—which it isn’t-—I could offer you a curious 
one. This preamble is merely excuse for telling you the 
following :— 

During the War I was giving some Readings to Blinded 
Soldiers and I chose The Trial Scene and Act V of Othello ; 
of the familiar scenes I thought that probably they could be 
visualised more easily than most. 

The Merchant went off well, Shylock got his laughs and his 


219 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


thrills, but without his face the scene is Portia’s entirely. 
Shylock was almost a figure of fun in their imagination and 
they thoroughly enjoyed his discomfiture. I don’t doubt 
that this is the way Elizabethan audiences took him. 
Well, the more heartily they laughed the greater was 
Burbage’s triumph in his silent exit. 

But Othello held them as in a vice. There was that won¬ 
derful sympathetic pause at the end that shows how an 
audience is gripped—and who could listen to the words of that 
last speech without choking?—they choked and then cheered. 

But observe this, for here is my point; when I was sup¬ 
posed to wound Iago, as I lunged with an imaginary sword 
I stamped my foot—ever so lightly, but I stamped. And 
from the blind men came a startled “ Oh ! ” which con¬ 
demned me instantly for an inartistic bungler ; I should have 
left it to Shakespeare ; he was holding their imagination ; 
they knew Iago was bleeding without my clumsy realism. 

Of the new plays produced, or about to be, Daddies — 
last night—at the Haymarket will be a huge success—of 
slush ! The Voice from the Minaret is good enough, with 
the Press’s usual boom for Marie Lohr—and it is the only 
serious play in London, but Marie Lohr as grande amoureuse ! 
Jack 0’ Jingles : did I not say that there is always a public 
for a reasonably interesting Romantic Drama ? It was a 
great idea to put Lilian Braithwaite into the lead ; that also 
ensures a good Press. Home and Beauty will run a year. 
I long to see it. I prophesy a great boom for The Bird of 
Paradise ; it will be too expensive and elaborate to damn in 
these times. The Musical plays are all safe. 

Yours equably, 

P.S. —Chris has fixed her first leading part. 


220 


LETTER XXXIX 


Hastings 

16th September , 1919. 

Behold me on the sea-shore ! 

I feared I was to miss its breezes this year but my fate 
is better. 

I came here for a consultation, but the parent refuses to 
accept my diagnosis of the off-spring’s condition so the 
patient will survive or languish without my ministration 
and I retire, baffled, and as gracefully as may be. 

Does Harley Street exact a fee when its counsel is repudi¬ 
ated ? I don’t know ; but 14 no play—no pay ” is an old 
playhouse rule, as just as dignified. 

On what grounds should we claim payment for what we 
have not done ? We are not bricklayers. 

My author and I have differed, shaken hands and 
parted. I remain here for a few days if the sun continues 
to shine. 

But the case may interest you : I told you of the Powder 
play I was called upon to doctor. I regard it as in parlous 
condition, conscious of malady yet unable to locate its ill. 
The system, indeed, is so diseased that the ill is omnipartial. 
It will die of a quotidian if it survive the first ague, for 
nightly it will blow hot and cold if it come to birth. The 
author regrets having consulted me. He is of those, I 
fear, who will accept no opinion that does not confirm his 
own. The fact is, as I assured him, he has been altogether 
too heavy-handed, over-anxious to impress, the theme 
being essentially comedy needs not only the ingenuity of the 
spider but his deftness in spinning threads. You shall 
judge. 

A girl in man’s attire—never mind why—goes to meet 


221 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


her lover at a posting-house on the Bath Road and there 
encounters, in place of him, a highwayman. 

Now is it possible to treat this situation gravely ?—especi¬ 
ally in the costume of 1760. There are two periods—and I 
know of no other—when it is conceivable that one may 
fail for two moments to detect the sex of the breeches- 
wearer ; and they are, roughly speaking, the reigns of King 
Charles the First and of Queen Anne. But if it be apparent 
at a glance that we are dealing with a male impersonation 
there is no hope of treating the scene in serious vein—at 
least, that is my contention. My author quoted Portia 
but could not move me and on that we split. I did not 
fail to warn him of what he might expect from his leading 
actress. Dress even the most experienced in manly garb 
and she is apt to lose nicety in her sense of proportion 
and may fail to resist indulgence in the antics of the 
amateur. 

I cited the case of a play I saw not so many years ago at 
Wyndham’s Theatre. The period was 1690, about: a 
Jacobite story. The girl, a country squire’s daughter, 
was supposed to don a cast-off suit of her younger brother’s 
and ride across country, hell-for-leather, to warn the Prince 
of Orange of the plot. You would expect to see her in 
heavy boots and spurs; over-large fustian coat, worn, 
stained and perhaps even torn ; loose neck-cloth and baggy 
breeches, carrying a heavy hunting-crop and with an old 
hat jammed on anyhow, which, when it was pulled off, 
allowed her hair to tousle on her shoulders as she stood 
with down-cast eyes blushing and smiling before the 
Prince. 

Not a bit of it! The leading lady wore pale blue silk 
embroidered with silver, the boots of a Principal Boy and 


222 


LETTER NUMBER THIRTY-NINE 


swaggered up to William carelessly swinging a jewelled 
switch. 

Some people go on their knees and beg for trouble. She 
got it and, as a result, so did the author and his play. I 
remember now that it was called The Sword of the King. 
Charles Fulton was William of Orange and acted most 
excellently as he always did. 

I went this morning to listen to the admirable orchestra 
of Norfolk Megone and incidentally to watch the crowd. 
The parade was as black as the good Mason’s kitchen fly¬ 
catcher—and what a crowd ! I searched in vain for some 
single person with the touch of distinction either in bearing 
or costume. Mr. Smillie’s friends abounded. There 
was a time when they favoured preferentially Margate and 
Yarmouth and the Hastings crowd had more refinement; 
but I gather the gentles who still remain are unable in these 
sordid times to afford the luxury of sea-breezes ; even the 
once aristocratic Weymouth and Bournemouth are now 
invested—and infested—by Mr. Smillie. 

In a corner near the band-stand sat a little figure crochet- 
ting, a thin wan face behind huge spectacles, and I recognised 
in her the last of the once celebrated Rosa Troup of acrobatic 
dancers who made a great hit at the Alhambra when I 
was in my teens. The small shrivelled form struck me as 
pathetic despite the fact that on the fingers were many dia¬ 
mond rings. 

As I wandered towards the Old Town, remembering 
many walks to Ecclesbourne and Fairlight—how many 
years ago !—We used to leave our overcoats at a little 
Tavern off the Market and, fortified with a mug of old ale 
to keep out the cold, sally forth to climb East Hill in any 
weather—I have done it in a foot of snow—then back to the 


223 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


Tavern for our coats ; another mug (to keep the warmth in), 
and so back to lodgings. 

Where was I ? Oh, half way to that well-remembered 
Tavern, whose closed doors mock our boasted freedom. 

Well, there lies the stranded submarine that you have 
read of in the papers. I had no idea the things were so 
huge. It must have been a mighty gale that whipped 
the sea to washing it up. But seas were always obstreperous 
at Hastings. I have seen all Robertson Street—fashion¬ 
able Robertson Street, it then was—under umbrellas on a 
clear, bright morning as protection from the spray as the 
swell split on the sea-wall and splashed over the house¬ 
tops in between. 

Semadini’s was in a narrow turning off Robertson Street 
—and is now. Ah, me, the cream-buns I have there ab¬ 
sorbed ! and cones of sticky pink and white sweet-meat, 
whose aspect now appals me—only less than Blackpool 
Rock—but the good Semadini’s chocolate was always of the 
best—as it still is. 

The Canadians have not carried with them many regrets 
for their departure. They would seem to have sacked the 
Palace Hotel where they were quartered, even as the enemy 
might. I remember it, before rebuilding to its proud 
pre-war proportions, as the most cosy and home-like of 
hostelries—the Sea View Hotel. I stayed there with my 
Father just before his last long illness. He was a man of 
better patience and braver hope, Redgie, than any I have 
known. 

Patience that is granted, I believe, only as consolation to 
those destined to suffer. 

Hope, the one compensation of Age, for Youth doesn’t 
hope—it just takes what it wants—or misses it. 


224 


LETTER NUMBER THIRTY-NINE 


When Youth passes and the misses multiply and hurt 
comes Hope to help us bear the pain. 

Take all you want, Redgie, while you can get it. 

Yours continually, 


225 


LETTER XL 


Hastings 

20th September, 1919. 

Still here, you see, and most glad to have your letter— 
and the magazine Drama , of which I have read every 
syllable. 

This Drama League, as I understand, aims at inducing 
everyone to act in an amateur way and at encouraging the 
composition and production of a true-to-life kind of enter¬ 
tainment that has no relation whatever to Drama properly 
so-called. It also wishes to apply the method of natural— 
or unskilled—interpretation to the classics and Owen 
Nares—if he fulfils my expectation—will be their ideal 
Hamlet. Not that Nares is an unskilled actor; but he 
has no skill in classical work. I know, for I saw him as 
Prince Hal. 

To these people Tragedy is an outworn tradition, anti¬ 
quated and ludicrous. Because they know that their 
fathers, brothers and cousins went “ over the top ” with 
“ Cheerio, old bean ! ” they consider any display of emotion 
as almost indecent and certainly laughable. 

Moreover, as many of the other sex were brides in April, 
widows in June and brides again in October they regard 
Imogen as a fool and Juliet as a lunatic. 

You say you have seen amateurs act far better than many 
professionals. 

“ A hit, a very palpable hit.” I am reluctantly forced 
to admit—so have I. 

Why is it that anyone can act and be thought “ not so 
bad,” whereas the violinist who performed as execrably 
as I saw a man do at the Gaiety Theatre here last night or 
the painter who laid on his colour as vilely as the same man 


226 


LETTER NUMBER FORTY 


will to-night would fail to win toleration for a single 
moment ? 

And you quote the Leading Lady of whom I told you in 
my last as an example of the utter wrongness of some pro¬ 
fessional work. 

Again : “A touch, a touch, I do confess.” My admission 
above confirms you. 

But the explanation is quite simple : many who have the 
acting instinct are wise enough not to venture in so precari¬ 
ous a profession ; many who have not that instinct are 
attracted by the glamour of a calling for which they have 
no qualification. There is no avoiding this unless and until 
we have an institution like the French Conservatoire that 
examines and refuses diplomas to the unsuitable. 

Not that the lady I referred to was incompetent. I 
had seen her do brilliant work, but in the particular case 
she lost her sense of proportion. You might have expected 
it from an amateur, who is likely to neglect to weigh the 
effect of one character against another— to keep fluid, so 
to speak, that he may blend with his fellow actors. This 
is a technical matter that comes only by training ; neg¬ 
lected each character will, as it were, hang as a picture on 
a wall when spacing is wide and mounts are over-large. 

But here is my point about actors and amateurs and the 
root of my objection to Drama League aims :—Brown, 
let us say, is a bad actor ; that is, he may entirely fail to 
satisfy you by his performances, but still there is no doubt 
he is an actor. He can give you credible impersonations, 
for example, of both Benedick and Dogberry ; he will wear 
the costumes as though he lived in them as his every-day 
habit; he will look like the persons he presents because he 
is skilled in the art of make-up ; he will speak and bear 


227 




LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 

himself conformably to each character. That you dis¬ 
approve his readings or deny the discretion of the effects he 
chooses to make does not alter the fact that he has acquired and 
does display the technical qualities of the Art he professes. 

Now turn to the amateur. You have seen him as Sir 
Christopher Deering, let us suppose, and you thought him 
fine—perfect—the very man ! I choose Sir Christopher 
as my example because The Liars is the sort of play in which 
I have myself seen the amateur excel so that his admiring 
friends exclaimed “You really must go on the stage ! ” 
He is, in fact, excellent; not Wyndham, of course, one 
doesn’t expect that, but easy, natural, missing no point : 
he might well be in his own drawing room. Jones has 
written the play with such skill that suavity and the natural 
bearing of a gentleman is all he asks of Sir Christopher’s 
interpreter. Now cast this amateur as Sir Toby Belch 
and see what happens. The suave medical, surveying or 
stock-broking manner is a useless asset; the costume ham¬ 
pers him ; the diction worries, he intones or recites the lines 
and interprets nothing ; he has never studied or particularly 
observed the effects of drunkenness so that his attempts to 
portray the gentleman who is “ soaked ” result in an uncon¬ 
vincing display that is certainly not a picture of a gentleman 
in his cups—let alone a gentleman of the Sixteenth Century 
—if even any recognisable type of gentleman. The amateur 
is shown up, not as a bad actor, but as the mere dilettante 
he is, utterly ignorant of the first principles of the technique 
of acting. His Sir Christopher was a happy accident. 
And I dare say you would be surprised if you knew what 
a number of such accidents happen on the Stage and manage 
to get away with it by carefully avoiding any engagement 
that might call for acting of any sort. 


228 


LETTER NUMBER FORTY 


You say that surely expert dramatic criticism should be 
a guide and corrective of such evils. But too often the 
criticisms in the Press are mere reporting and a question 
arises as to whether it has any legitimate place in the columns 
of a daily newspaper whose readers, in the main, are not 
in the least interested in the Theatre—certainly not to the 
extent of being concerned with its artistic aspirations. 

Very often criticism -I mean that written by so-called 
experts—amounts to just this: I hate your handsaw because 
it is neither a hawk nor a heron. In other words, the 
author, who for months has been at great pains to state 
his case, is told that if he had chosen a different case and 
stated it differently the result might have been—well, 
different! Rarely indeed do you read criticism that gives 
credit—or discredit—for what a play is rather than what it 
might be and is not. They abuse cabinet-makers for 
not being gardeners and masons because they are not 
greengrocers. 

A play’s first object is to amuse ; if it also instruct so 
much the better ; if, in addition to both, it provoke any 
real depth of thought—exemplify an eternal truth, then it 
will live. But an ephemeral play may have a very real 
value ; and, if it be a good acting vehicle also, it deserves 
to be criticised for what it is— not abused for what it does 
not pretend to be. 

All this applies equally to criticism of acting, which is 
often just as unfairly—or it may be thoughtlessly—written. 
There are some writers who appear to detest the Theatre 
and all that pertains thereto and gratify their spleen by 
indulging in personalities gross and impertinent. The 
fact is the fully qualified dramatic critic would be an expert 
playwright who did not compete in the play-market and 


229 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


also an accomplished actor who had not given up acting 
because he had failed at it. 

To be of real value I think a critique should have a recog¬ 
nised form from which it should be anathema for any critic 
to depart, while allowing him all possible scope within its 
limitations— naturally this does not apply to A. B. Walkley’s 
delightful essays in The Times , nothing must be allowed to 
interfere with them. It should have three parts : (a) the 
subject matter of the play with analysis of the technical 
errors or perfections in its treatment (b) analysis of the actors’ 
work with regard to the whole and the parts ( c ) analysis 
of the effect of the whole upon the public—the mass and 
the expert. 

But some critics are solely concerned with advertising 
their own personalities and use the play as their vehicle, 
as Shaw did when he contributed his series to The Saturday 
Review. No one could regard those articles as serious 
dramatic criticism though they made one of the cleverest 
booms I can remember. Shaw has many of the character¬ 
istics of the late Mr. Barnum and he owes the foundation 
of his fortune to the drum-beating instinct which he shared 
with the defunct and lamented Phineas. 

No journalist since has quite rivalled that effort though 
many are still striving. 

To-day all such articles are signed or initialled ; “ to 
my mind ” one reads as prelude to many an inexpert ver¬ 
dict. There was more dignity in the authority and mystery 
shrouded by the old-fashioned editorial “ We.” O.P.Q. 
may hide the identity of anybody—who may be nobody. 


LETTER XLI 


London 

30 th September , 1919. 

It reminds me of Derby Day ! 

The old-fashioned Derby Day as I remember it in the 
Wandsworth Road but without the white hats decorated 
with Dutch dolls and the grass-green puggarees. 

Everything going one way: four-in-hands, phaetons, 
barouches, landaus, Victorias, dog-carts, donkey-carts, 
velocipedes—Have you ever seen the old-fashioned velocipede 
with its front wheel four feet in diameter, Redgie ? I 
saw more than one of them to-day at Albert Gate. 

A big crowd, a jolly crowd ; women, men, girls and boys, 
all marching East-ward! Mr. Smillie has his pistol at 
our head and so perforce we must walk to town. For¬ 
tunately it w r as a fine day, and the novel experience amused. 
It was a bit of a drag for many of the old ones and those 
in bad health and the crippled whose bread depends upon 
their office-jobs. Mr. Smillie has much to answer for— 
even to his own poor dupes, whose savings must be sorely 
taxed to gratify his whim. 

The Government must win if it stand firm and it will be 
more than wise in this event to do so, for here is a chance 
to win back much of the respect it has forfeited in the past 
months. 

Lloyd George may once more interview the Strike leaders 
and when they have stated their terms say: “How moderate! 
Of course we will give you that.” His simple formula, 
you know, for settling trade disputes. Brilliant, isn’t it ? 
But he’ll miss a great chance if he uses it this time and I 
don’t think he’ll dare. Public opinion is really roused. 

The motor-buses and trams strike in sympathy so traffic 


231 


Q 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


is almost at a standstill. Hyde Park is closed ; it has 
become a vast Exchange for the distribution of milk. 

You should not feel it much in your town, for it must 
end before it pinches but I’m glad you’re out of London 
which will be an angry City after about ten days of this. 
To-day it is a joke ; soon there will be hunger and backs 
will begin to stiffen. 

It may be useless to post this, but I write on chance. 

I had yours this morning. Trains are running on the Dis¬ 
trict Railway manned by volunteers ; soon there will be 
limited service to all the big Centres. As it had to be it 
is well to get it over and prove to this gang that blackmail 
of the community can be dealt with by precisely the same 
method as blackmail of the individual and that, though no 
mob is more easily cajoled than the citizens of London 
who will even submit to a certain amount of bullying, they 
are yet capable, when they become conscious of tyrannical 
interference with their liberties, of extremely disagreeable 
reprisals. 

The bait to lure the strikers is the impossible socialistic * 
ideal of Equality, towards which the first step is Nationaliza¬ 
tion of all Public works ! Destructive fallacy ! But to¬ 
wards this end the Mr. Smillies, who know well that the poor 
gulls could never be their equals in any sense but knavish¬ 
ness, egg them on—to exploit them—to grind them, as 
in the result they would, for there is no mill-stone so relent¬ 
lessly cruel as Democracy. 

And for this reason : Democracy confers equal rights of 
citizenship on all. Note the important word, “ equal.” 

Now if there be one fact that is patent to every thinking 
creature it surely is that all men are un-e qual. An acute 
observer will find the points of difference even in the 


232 


LETTER NUMBER FORTY-ONE 


Terry Twins ; indeed, any biologist will confirm the faet 
that no two of us are alike even physically ; how “ much 
more therefore,” as dear old Euclid says, do we differ 
intellectually ? How many per cent, of the population 
do you suppose, are capable, unaided, of forming a logical 
opinion upon any given subject, an opinion which they 
can sustain with five minutes’ reasoned argument, keeping 
to the point. Ninety per cent, of those who can form an 
opinion will shift from the general to the personal in defence 
of it under two minutes. What follows ? Why, that the 
majority have their opinions found for them. Only a 
very small percentage of those who make it their profession 
to find opinions for others are altruist; the rest are the 
Axe-grinders and the Envious. In the result Democracy, 
nice as it sounds—“ by the people for the people ! ” Oh, 
very pretty !—really amounts to government by the Axe- 
grinders and the Envious. 

The procedure is simple : j^ou set up a figure-head 
behind which you may travesty in case you over-reach your¬ 
selves and then you start : you persuade your dupes to 
elect you as their representatives and vote yourselves salaries 
for obliging them ; you select a Cabinet of yourselves to 
whom you allot exorbitant retaining fees, keeping a tight 
hold on all financial strings, bull and bear the world markets 
and quadruple your incomes by every rumour ; you institute 
Ministries with thousands of officials to make an imposing 
show for your own glorification and also to convince the 
gulls that their money is really being spent—in part—in 
their own Country. You boast that your system is economi¬ 
cal though it stifles individual enterprise by destroying 
competition which is the life-blood of efficiency; you 
protect the foreigner in your own markets, penalise the 


233 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


employer and subsidise the unemployable ; you strangle the 
Services—except the Civil Service—and encourage the 
mendicant alien to settle in your midst that he may 
promote social gangrene, both physical and mental. 

Every Office is for sale for a Democracy has no standards 
but Expedience and Compromise ; as none is better than 
another it follows that the best must sink to the level of 
the worst, for all levelling is inevitably levelling down ! The 
mountain may crumble on to the plain ; the plain can never 
rise to the mountain-top. 

And thus is society divided into two classes ; the Knaves 
and the Dupes—the Squeezers and the Squeezed, and 
government is by a conspiracy of officials whose sole aim 
is to augment their stipend, no matter by what practice of 
corruption. Is it to be supposed that the Dupes will be 
better off—work less and earn more—than under what they 
now revile as the Capitalist System ? 

Quite the reverse. Nothing but envy blinds them to its 
overwhelming advantages to themselves. 

In place of the coal-owner—mine-owner—railway com¬ 
pany, each held in check by the competition of other owners 
and companies, they would have the Monopoly State, organ¬ 
ized to grind the ultimate decimal from their sweat to moisten 
the slakeless maw of its officialdom. 

None will produce anything. All will strive to become 
official and share the plunder. 

Bankruptcy ! 

Then Germany, recuperated while we have squabbled, 
walks in and seizes the State. We have behaved too grudg¬ 
ingly to France to expect her to exert herself again as a 
buffer. So the Hun enjoys his carefully planned revenge. 
For make no mistake, it is he who has worked the whole 


234 


LETTER NUMBER FORTY-ONE 


thing through his diabolical invention Bolshevism, financed 
by the loot from Russia, whom he has destroyed by his 
agents Trotsky and Lenin. 

I wish I had control of the enormous wealth which I 
believe now lies hidden in Berlin, the proceeds of the pillag¬ 
ing of Russia. 

It has been said that Man forgets culture when he is hungry. 
Is culture, then, merely a veneer ? Are manners no more 
ingrain than the antics of a performing ape ? Is respect 
for law mere dread of police ? Is my purse—my house— 
my field only sacred to me because there are prisons at 
Brixton and Pentonville and Portland looms behind them ? 

These men who refuse to work are robbing me as delib¬ 
erately as though they snatched my tie-pin or my pocket- 
book. 

It is pretended that they suffer in forfeiting their wages, 
but that is merely pretence ; they know their dole is secure 
to them at my expense and yours. In reality they are 
practising blackmail, which if it succeed is theft. 

But the time must come when a more enlightened—or 
more honest—group of politicians will insist that they give 
some return in labour for the dole. Obviously the dema¬ 
gogue prefers to keep them in a state of subjection—and 
dejection—for he knows that with the incentive of honest 
work the natural independence of the Englishman will 
assert itself and he will lose his influence. 

The agitator approves the dole because he knows it for 
an unwholesome drug that is demoralising Labour, render¬ 
ing it the easier prey for his exploitation—creating a mental 
appetite that may the more readily assimilate the sub¬ 
versive propaganda with which he dopes it. 

He points to lamentable housing conditions, wilfully 


235 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


ignoring the fact that the squalor in 'which many of his 
victims exist is of their own making—that it is of their 
deliberate choice, since they abstain from any effort to 
improve it. Communism is delighted to perpetuate these 
evidences of alleged oppression—fosters them as nourish¬ 
ment for Class-hatred. 

In my time I have seen much of slum life ; I used to 
go slumming with Henry Pettitt the dramatist, who found 
many of his best ideas for character in labarinthine 
back-alleys. 

Were you to transport the dregs of some Lancashire town 
to Mayfair, in a year they would make Curzon Street as 
scrofulous as their present abode. It is the unclean people 
who make slums, not slums that make people unclean. 

The morality of preferential treatment for the Unem¬ 
ployable and the Shirker is a large question. Communism 
clamours for such preference. 

Is it ethical to “ treat ” them at the expense of the In¬ 
dustrious and the Thrifty ? 

I have never heard convincing argument in support of 
the affirmative. 

I am well aware that my views are what are called re¬ 
actionary. It does not disturb me in the least. The whole 
fabric of civilisation is based upon respect for the right of 
the individual to control what is legitimately his own : 
the work of his hands and brain (not undertaken under 
contract with another) the fruit of his work obtained by 
purchase and the gift of relative or friend whether granted 
directly or by legacy. What he disburses voluntarily— 
that is to say under the vote of his elected representative— 
towards the maintenance of the State is a just contribution ; 
but what is filched from him by a majority of votes, lawyer- 


236 


LETTER NUMBER FORTY-ONE 


jockeyed in the interest of venal leaders who pander to a 
clamorous and corrupt minority, is fraudulently obtained. 

To plunder him more effectually two subversive measures 
were invented ; the Trades’ Union Act and the Payment of 
Members Act. Until these Acts are modified or repealed 
hope of freedom for him is vain. 

The evils that were initiated in granting salaries to Members 
of Parliament can only result in the generation of cancerous 
ulcer in the body politic. Receipt of payment must bias 
the judgment of whomever is dependent upon others’ favour 
either for advancement or merely for the continuance of 
such payment. Independent decision is no longer possible. 
Thus Members, in place of retaining their dignity as repre¬ 
sentatives, surrender their wills to Party leaders. 

Trades’ Unionism is a political conspiracy in which cowardly 
politicians have connived, thus placing a lethal weapon 
in the dangerous hand of the primitive brute Labour to 
menace the class whom they, the politicians, were sworn 
to represent and protect: the great majority, at present 
inert—the milch-cow—the golden-egg-laying goose—the 
backbone of the Country—the Middle Class. 

By conceding it our legislators scandalously betrayed 
their trust. 

The reckless waste of money—wrung, in the main, from 
the Middle Class—upon schemes for educating the inedu¬ 
cable, the class who live in envy of the hard-w^on amenities 
their mulcted benefactors enjoy, is the crying injustice 
of the Age. 

The alleged purposes for which Trades’ Unionism was 
legalised are mythical. Labour suffered no ill that our 
Law Courts could not remedy—no form of sweating or in¬ 
justice that was not matter for the Police. 


237 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


Heaven forbid that I should ever assert—even on an 
impulse—that the minority is in the wrong because it is a 
minority. It has its rights, no less sacred than those of the 
majority and often much more logical. But to place a 
bludgeon in the hands of a minority who cannot think for 
themselves, who are led by Self-seekers—often by Active 
Enemies of the State—is a danger that must lead to debacle 
and ultimately to dissolution. 

Remedies ? 

Let it be taught, expounded, preached throughout the 
Land that a People who have lost Veneration—who res¬ 
pect nothing—neither God, their fellow-Man nor themselves 
—themselves are lost! 

Veneration is the touchstone of Civilisation. 

Equality may be of the spirit never of the flesh. 

I know these are Truths. I am by no means sure that 
you or anyone else will recognise them. 


288 


LETTER XL1I 


London 

10 th October , 1919. 

Have you ever felt when making a new acquaintance that 
whatever view that person might take of whatever subject 
you must disagree solely because he took it ?•—not from 
sheer perversity, but from a feeling of panic-stricken repug¬ 
nance that that particular person should see the thing as 
as you do. 

Marie gave me tea and in her lounge I found such a 

person, a Miss D-, not known to you, I gathered, but 

one whom Marie had met at the theatre. I know her kind 
well and sedulously avoid it. It takes a disproportionate 
interest in other peoples’ affairs ; it is over-confident in 
its own accomplishment, over-critical of its neighbours’ 
and offensively patronizing. 

The Princess certainly scintillates as a hostess, her tact 
is unrivalled, she knows exactly how far to encourage 
each guest and with her intuitive sense always manages 
to launch subjects of conversation appropriate to their 
individualities. 

I was glad to hear that the object of her flying visit to 
town was in some degree accomplished. The Manager 
did keep the appointment; but Marie is a person who is 
treated with proper deference, she arrogates it—without 
arrogance. 

The engagement is not settled, of course. When is an 
engagement ever settled without yards of preliminaries 
and so many delays that any pleasure in the settlement is 
entirely discounted ? However I hope it will be settled ; 
it is ideal for her needs. A man who was of the party is 
already engaged for the Company. He is an old acquaint- 


239 



LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


ance of mine and an admirable actor of certain parts, 
but, like myself, should never be asked to wear modern 
clothes on the stage. We were playing together once in a 
modem play and he was cast for an exquisite. The author 
was not at all pleased with him at rehearsal and in a discus¬ 
sion I had with him, the author, afterwards—I as producer 
was trying to smoothe matters —“ The part,” I said, “ is 
like an exotic flower which the others, being themselves 
cabbages, resent and kill.” “Quite so,” rejoined the author, 
“ but X makes him a spring onion.” 

It is an actor’s job to do as he is told—at least to be 
able to do it—and argue with the producer after, if he must. 
But he should be able to create the same effect by his own 
method if he can’t or won’t do the thing the way the co¬ 
ordinator of the whole designs. But actors too often regard 
their individual part as greater than the whole play. This 
is a disastrous attitude, even though the part be Hamlet. 

What a boon it might be to actors who love their work 
and to authors who are striving to improve their technique 
if they were allowed in the stalls at rehearsals, as one may 
listen in the Law Courts—at one time a favourite occupation 
of mine. Obviously it is impossible. An actor of any 
sensitiveness could never rehearse before an audience— 
and such a one ! Good heavens, how awful. Poor actors 
and poor author ; how they would be flayed and scarified 
by their confreres. No, that’s not an affectation, there is 
no English for it that I know : comrades they are not, 
nor colleagues, but just members of the same fraternity. 
And how the producer—some producers—would show off! 
Imagine poor old Tree in such a case : how he would have 
posed and with what quips and quiddities he would have 
quiddled ! 


240 


LETTER NUMBER FORTY-TWO 


No, it would never work as long as human nature 
is as it is and I see no signs of it changing to a kindlier 
sense. 

But Marie’s tea-party—Informal tea is delightful but 

Tea as a function-Well, no doubt it is part of a girl’s duty 

in life but to me it is purely penitentiary ; I suppose because 
I always sit tongue-tied, an attitude I detest. 

The rites of Tea do not encourage conviviality. Woman 
presides in both senses : she sits before and above and her 
afternoon’s shopping is the primary subject of discussion. 
I try to take an intelligent interest in foularde and georgette, 
'passementerie and accordion-pleating, but no one would 
pretend that I shine. 

Conversation meanders towards Art, the modern feminine 

aspect of Art. Miss D-is, of course, an ardent Drama 

Leaguer. The moment inevitably arrives when, having 
seethed inwardly to boiling point, I burst—something flies 
and I commit a social solecism. 

You have called me unsociable and no doubt you are 
right; I am certainly unsocial. Friendship is too sacred 
a thing to bandy about and exchange with Tom or Dick, Jane 
or Harriet. The world does not love those who smile ; but 
the beastly time-server and hypocrite cringes to them because 
he believes that seeming happiness is positive indication 
of the possession of wealth, before which he is ever ready 
to prostrate ; his sordid soul can’t realise that the one is 
possible without the other. Love and Friendship should 
not be cheapened by a too promiscuous outpouring though 
Courtesy and Kindliness may be allowed to flow without a 
spigot. 

Marie, knowing my weakness, fed me with cream cakes 
and cleverly enmeshed X in the web of Miss D-’s 


241 




LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


fascination. I must admit to enjoying a certain malicious 
satisfaction in watching the squirming of poor X whose 
artistic pride is extremely sensitive and who suffers the 
feminine weakness of invariably applying generalities to 
himself. If he hears it remarked that Godfrey Tearle or 
Henry Ainley is the best looking man on the Stage he 
takes it as a personal affront. 

But it was the lady—with w hom I hope alw r ays to exist in 
cordial disagreement—who most interested me. I looked at 
her and I looked at Marie. Marie powders her nose. I 
wish she didn’t. Powder is the thin end of the wedge that 
thickens to rouged cheeks and bulks large in blackened 
eyebrows and farded lips. No one reasonably objects to 
powder qua powder—though I prefer some noses shiney— 
but to v^hat of deception it suggests. But when I turn 
from contemplation of that adventitious bloom so delicately 

applied to face the stark nakedness of Miss D-’s 

olfactory organ conviction staggers and performs volte-face. 
If we abandon our theories it is that experience proves 
them cataractic. 

Miss D-scorns all forms of pretence ; she is of that 

aggressive clan called “ downright ” and goes in bare-faced 
indecency advertising on her countenance the bias of her 
outlook. I don’t mean that she squints physically but 
her mental squint is of the most oblique. No, she doesn’t 
squint, she has the unemotional, calculating, cruel eye of 
the German. 

I try always to keep off the subject of the Drama in mixed 
company or when the party includes Moderns, for I know 
they regard me as a very grumpy Old Pro. because I can 
pretend only a minimum of interest in the kind of play they 
think the only kind ; and the acting they rave about as 


242 



LETTER NUMBER FORTY-TWO 


“ sweet ” (for the male) and “ dinky ” (for the female) 
infuriates me to the point of rabidity. 

But after all the positiveness of inexperience is the only 
true wisdom. It is when we begin to entertain the idea 
that perhaps the other fellow may be right that our troubles 
and difficulties begin. 

But on these occasions it is well to remember that the 
virtue of modesty has grave disadvantages. True that 
self-praise is not accepted as good evidence, but equally 
true that self-depreciation is generally considered very 
reliable evidence indeed. One is valued always at one’s 
lowest estimate of oneself ; the studiously modest invariably 
gets left. 

We talked of Reparation and of The Lost Leader at the 
Court and all found much to praise in the admirable first 
Act of the latter. I had to admit—for I was eventually 
drawn into the discussion—that I could not accept Norman 
McKinnel as the embodiment of Parnell. I have always 
thought of Parnell as a sympathetic person and McKinnel 
in any part that is not, at least, sinister is—well, in my 
opinion, unsuited. 

McKinnel’s case is similar to that of that very brilliant 
actor Charles Cartwright, who never failed, until, under his 
own management, he insisted on playing the hero. His 
hard-set jaw and voice like a steel file dipped in vinegar 
rasping on the uneven teeth of a blunted saw were incapable 
of stirring sympathetic emotion. I once saw him play 
Pierre in The Two Orphans— May he and the Manager who 
cast him for the part be forgiven ! 

But Cartwright was a fine actor. There were three 
great scenes of acting in an indifferent play at the Adelphi 
called In the Days of the Duke and two of them we owed 


243 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


to Cartwright. In the more impressive he had the 
invaluable co-operation of Marion Terry. The third gave 
us one of the best exhibitions of swordsmanship I have 
ever seen—by Terriss and Beveridge. 

Talk about Reserved Force !—which is generally all 
reserve and no force—in the scene I recall Cartwright was 
like a quick volcano—Etna with its bowl brimming with 
molten lava, seething, swelling, rippling, bubbling and yet 
not overflowing; eruption imminent but never bursting— 
his voice never raised above a whisper, but the muscles of 
his throat and jaw quivering, his humid temple throbbing 
—as Kean’s when he played Sir Edward Mortimer in 
Colman’s adaptation of Godwin’s Caleb Williams.* 

And Marion Terry pleading to the man who worshipped 
her, who had killed her husband in jealousy and now held 
her son’s life in his hands. It sounds commonplace, but 
these two exceptional actors lifted it to the highest plane 
of emotional expression. 

And Cartwright was an admirable comedian too, as I 
remember well in The Bells of Haslemere , for his villain 
was a jaunty and amusing H. J. Byronesque chevalier 
(Tindustrie in the earlier acts. But I saw him as Dan’l 
Peggotty—No ! 

In Helen with the High Hand McKinnel gave an admir¬ 
able study of a curmudgeon in the grimly comic vein. But 
I saw him as King Lear— 

The lack of sympathy in the leading character—I speak 
now of The Lost Leader —so disturbed the play that I 
could not judge it, but I doubt it would have held anyhow 
after Act I which did seem to promise a vital interest and 
was admirably acted by Miles Malleson. 

* The Iron Chest. 


244 




LETTER NUMBER FORTY-TWO 


My visit to the St. James’ provoked other and very sad 
reflections. It was one of the few houses that preserved 
in its atmosphere the dignity of the Theatre ; it was not a 
garish showbox like so many, all looking-glass, variegated 
marble and tawdry gilding, but, in common with Drury 
Lane, Covent Garden, the Havmarket and the Garrick in 
John Hare’s time, it had an air, not of solemnity but of 
serious intention, which must be the basis of every artistic 
effort and is surely the fittest setting for it even though its 
texture be of gossamer. 

They have not exactly white-washed the St. James’ 
but the effect is very little different. It is distempered in 
French grey and upholstered in cherry coloured plush ; 
a chilling environment. 

The curtain rose to discover a room—in French grey of 
the exact shade and upholstered in the identical cherry. 

This is beyond question an artistic mistake. Reinhardt 
brought the stage into the auditorium ; Stanley Bell carries 
the auditorium on to the stage. Anything that arrests 
attention—that distracts—that does not assist the illusion 
of reality there beyond the footlights must be artistically 
wrong. 

The story of Tolstoy’s The Living Corpse , upon which 
Reparation is founded, is not inspiring, but it offers a tre¬ 
mendous chance to the actor in the final phase, when Fedya 
is discovered in the drinking den and dragged back to life. 

Oh, the curse of long runs and prosperity ! The night 
I saw the play—at least so it seemed to me—Ainley did not 
trouble to act. 

I was within a few feet of Ainley on the stage of Drury 
Lane at the performance of Julius Caesar in celebration 
of the Shakespeare Tercentenary and I heard Lady Alexander 


245 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


say to him—it was before his first entrance as Antony— 
“ This is the great moment of your career! ” (or words to 
the same effect) and indeed it was an opportunity such as 
comes to but very few. But Ainley left all the work to 
Shakespeare ; he attempted neither to personate nor—so 
far as I could judge—to interpret. He only “spoke right 
on.” 

Can it be that I have a totally false conception of Antony 
as the subtlest of politicians—the most astute of sympathetic 
hypocrites—the paragon of Arch-Diplomatists ? 

Antony cannot fail to be interesting as Caesar’s devoted 
friend, triumphant by sheer force of dogged honesty, but 
acted so the part loses its dominance. Moreover study of 
the text will prove this amiable attitude untenable. 

Why did Shakespeare in this play dwell upon Caesar’s 
“ thrasonical brag —insist upon his infirmities and draw 
him as a superstitious fool ? Do you suppose he knew no 
better ? The answer to that you will find in Hamlet — 
“ the mightiest Caesar ”—and in Richard the Third —“ Death 
makes no conquest of this conqueror.” He had a purpose, 
he had always a purpose, and in this case it was not merely 
to fortify Brutus. 

The subject is interesting. Think it out, Redgie, and 
write to me of your conclusions. 

Yours, 


246 


LETTER XLIII 


London 

12 th October , 1919. 

Since I wrote to you last poor H. B. Irving has passed— 
four days ago—after long illness, I believe. I did not know 
him well, I think few people did ; he was singularly inacces¬ 
sible except to his intimates, but I found him agreeable 
in a sort of hearty way—that wasn’t from the heart— 
which was his managerial pose for those who were not 
under his management. He had none of that unaffected 
frankness of his brother Laurence. 

But what is to be said of him as an actor ? 

This first, I think, that but for his father’s name and fame 
he would never have abandoned the studies that more force¬ 
fully attracted him for the uncertain glory of striving to 
fill, with rather cold and shrivelled feet—I imagine them like 
carved ivory—the vacant shoes so very many sizes too large 
for him. 

He had a certain angular facility, polished by long years 
of practice. Nursed and pampered in Ben Greet’s Reper¬ 
tory, he was given every chance to try his flight in all the 
great leading parts— forced, one may say, in the hot¬ 
house Opportunity. What part would he choose to try 
next ? He had but to say and the play was put in rehearsal. 

And the result—? 

I saw him as Hamlet, Iago, in The Lyons Mail , Louis the 
Eleventh and his father’s old part of Gregory Brewster, 
as well as in some half dozen modern plays, which he merely 
strolled through as himself. They didn’t matter artisti¬ 
cally one way or the other. If you liked H. B. and it amused 
you to see him do it—well. If you wanted acting—you 
went elsewhere in search of it. 


247 


R 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


There were two exceptions to this in my knowledge : 
his performance of Beverley in The Barton Mystery and his 
Wilfred Denver. Beverley was a great part and no doubt 
he modelled his performance upon his father’s Jingle or 
Jeremy Diddler. He created a big effect with it but I 
could not be quite fair to him, because the great figure stood 
in my imagination towering over him and dwarfing all his 
effort. 

In The Silver King he attempted the impossible; he strove 
to modernise the character ; that is to say, to walk through 
it and let it play itself in the modern fashion. But Wilfred 
Denver must be taken hold of, characterised and acted . 
True as the story was in 1881—How well I remember seeing 
the play for the first time in my Christmas holidays—it is 
untrue in the conditions of to-day. The telephone, electric 
light, motor-cars, wireless and all that they stand for falsify 
it. The Wheatsheaf on Derby Day is now an unreal picture. 
The Spider and his associates quite unconvincing. The 
silver mine ; the eviction of Nellie ; the simplicity of the 
village school-children’s evening hymn; the villagers 
themselves—The modern critic scoffs at the sentiment as 
unreal. It was real in 1881 and, if the play must be revived 
(I would prefer it had not been) it is producer’s and actors’ 
duty to make it appear real now ; the author alone can’t 
do it. This was not done ; it was not even attempted and 
the result was misfortune. 

H. B. Irving played Iago to the Othello of Lewis Waller 
and both actors were very simply themselves. Neither 
can have had, for one moment, the thought of impersona¬ 
tion. If either had the notion of asking himself: What is 
Iago—or Othello—thinking in this passage ? I should be 
very surprised. No ; the first idea in both minds must have 


248 


LETTER NUMBER FORTY-THREE 


been : What will be most effective for me ? And that they 
did as well as they were able, and effective it proved, as the 
columns of Press matter about the star-cast testified—for 
Evelyn Millard was the Desdemona and Edith Wynne 
Matthison the Emilia. And so the dossier was discreetly 
sealed and placed, very properly, in its pigeon-hole. 

Hamlet is every man and H. B. had abundant precedent 
in making no attempt to personate when he played him. 
Yet if I tell you of his father’s Hamlet and persuade you in 
any measure to my view you will find in it my criticism of 
his son’s performance. 

But I won’t do that yet because I want to tell you first 
something of Charles Kean. He paved the way for Irving 
in more senses than one. 

Louis the Eleventh is a rather long-winded play in tedious 
Alexandrines ; Le Courrier de Lyon , a drama in eight tab¬ 
leaux, simply and vigorously written, with a number of 
fine parts all logically developed ; for example, Choppard 
is a rich piece of portraiture, which was originally imper¬ 
sonated by the great French actor Paulin-Menier. 

Dion Boucicault prepared a version in English of the 
first for Charles Kean and Charles Reade adapted the 
second, which was somewhat modified, rearranged and more 
aptly christened The Lyons Mail for Irving. In both cases 
the originals were mercilessly hacked to create vehicles for 
the English Star, and the results were their justification. 

In Louis the Eleventh Charles Kean had the triumph of 
his career. Both characters were among the finest efforts 
of Irving, who also used Dion Boucicault’s adaptation of 
Louis by the courtesy of Mrs. Charles Kean. But Irving gave 
no imitation of Kean’s performance ; in many ways he 
contradicted it. 


249 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


But H. B. Irving attempted no more than to reproduce 
his father’s performances of both characters and in both 
instances one glaring fact obtruded, which was in itself 
criticism of the acting : the painful thinness of the play. 
The picture was never real, it never filled the stage ; the 
thing was not alive, it had no dimensions. 

I am not going to compare the productions scene by scene 
as I could ; they were mere husks without kernels, bodies 
without souls. As one left the theatre one heard on all 
sides nothing but regrets that a favourite should appear 
in such poor stuff—but no word of his acting ! Could there 
be more vital condemnation ? The only excuse for such 
vehicles is that the actor should dominate all and make 
his audience lose sight of his material in their admiration 
of his art. 

I took Chris to see H. B. Irving in A Story of Waterloo — 
there was another play in the programme, so thin that I 
quite forget it—and I was most interested to note the effect 
upon her. It is an effective little piece of sentiment and 
from that point of view it touched her, but she was not for 
a moment impressed. The thing has no raison d'etre unless 
the impersonation of the old Corporal be a tour de force . 
For that reason Irving acted it only after one of his great 
roles , such as Mathias, and made his effect as much by con¬ 
trast as by the minute detail of his observation in the com¬ 
position of a character so widely different to anything else 
associated with his name. It was a perfect study of 
plebian senility, but Gregory Brewster is hardly a worthy 
medium for a great actor’s art. 

H. B. was no more than adequate in reproducing his 
father’s business ; his father’s make-up and clothes did the 
rest, helped by the little play’s reputation. 


250 


LETTER NUMBER FORTY-THREE 


Laurence Irving was a far finer actor than his brother : 
undoubtedly he inherited something of his father’s genius 
—though it developed in different directions. His perform¬ 
ance of the Japanese Tokeramo—played in Paris by de 
Max—was as nearly perfect as anything of the sort I have 
ever seen. The play suffered by the acting of his wife as 
the courtezan ; in no sense did she satisfy the requirements 
of the part. Helene is la grande amoureuse at her most 
alluring and voluptuous ; no mere drab of Brixton could 
raise such tempest of passion in the breast of the stoic 
diplomatist that for her he is content to sacrifice his life 
and his work, his career and his country. The title, 
Typhoon , is positive evidence that this element is essential 
to the development and I am convinced that it was because 
this was incredible with Miss Hackney as Helene that the 
play had no greater success. Such vogue as it did enjoy 
was tribute to Laurence Irving’s masterly performance. 

Only once did I see Mabel Hackney justify her position 
as a Leading Lady—in a play of Brieux’s, Le Hanneton , 
which her husband adapted as The Incubus. In the title 
role her personality and particular affectations appeared to 
be identical with those of the character. No doubt she 
was a charming woman : the tragic circumstances of her 
death cast a romantic halo around her memory. I never met 
her, though I knew Laurence well; but from the stalls I 
felt always that her personal qualities were small—that she 
was incapable of any depth of feeling—that no emotion ever 
reached her heart; thus it would not be difficult for her to 
realise the shallow, mean-souled, little scratch-cat that 
Brieux drew. 

It was Laurence Irving’s performance in The Unwritten 
Law , which he adapted himself from Dostoievsky’s Crime 


251 


LETTERS 0F % AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


and Punishment , that persuaded me that in him we might 
find a new Chief. It was curiously uneven— in certain 
scenes crude and ineffective as the work of the rawest 
novice, but suddenly he would rise on an inspiration and 
grip and hold the attention and thrill the house as I have 
seen no actor do since. 

By the way, it was on the occasion of my visit to the 
Kingsway to see that play that I first heard Rachmaninoff’s 
Prelude. I have not forgotten the impression it made 
upon me. In my mind it is always since associated with 
Macbeth. 

I saw Laurence play Iago to Tree’s Othello. I fear he 
was too concerned in being original to do himself or the part 
justice. Yet what an opportunity for any Shakespearean 
actor to play in any play of Shakespeare with Tree ! 

Laurence had enormous success as the old Marquis in 
The Lily , a performance as individual as his Tokeramo ; 
but it is by his extraordinary promise as Rodion Romanytch 
that I judge him and by his death I believe the Stage suffered 
irreparable loss. 

Of course we are right about Antony. Act IV Scene 1 
settles the question beyond argument. Antony foresaw 
the storm and had predetermined the part he meant to play 
in it. He was both soldier and diplomatist, keen, alert, 
supple, inflexible. 

Your analysis of his Servant’s excellent performance 
under his instruction in the Murder Scene is admirable. 
His own acting for the benefit of the Conspirators is a monu¬ 
mental example of diplomatic acuteness—bluff ! And this 
detracts nothing from his real affection for his dead friend, 
in whom, as Shakespeare has taken pains to draw him, there 
could be little to admire. 


252 


LETTER NUMBER FORTY-THREE 


Affection and admiration are not nseparably linked. 

It is strange. 

As Oscar Wilde most profoundly said: “ Nothing that 
is worth knowing can be taught.” So nothing that is 
worth experiencing can be described. If I would tell you 
how and where that deeper emotion, of which affection is 
but the puny shadow, must be rooted I should need a pen 
more searching and ink more consistent than the flippant 
fluency of Wilde. 

“ Beauty needs no explanation,” he wrote. He was too 
guarded. Beauty is beyond explanation and as Love is 
the beauty of the Spirit its explanation lies beyond infinity. 

Affection is the tepidity of cousinly kinship. 

From this you will deduce that I have been reading 
Intentions. I have also read De Profunlis. I think of 
Jack Point and Canio. 

He shall share with me the epitaph I have chosen: 

“ Rest perturbed spirit." 

I wish you could have seen Hawtrey coruscating as Lord 
Goring.* Effortless artistic collaboration in exultant 
prosperity. 

Yours affectionately , 

I am so very glad that Marie has settled that engagement. 
Please give her my heartiest congratulations. I look 
forward with entire confidence and the happiest anticipation 
to seeing her play the parts. I imagine you discussing them 
together and wrangling—most politely—over readings. 


* The Ideal IIu :band t by Oscar Wilde. 


253 



LETTER XLIV 

London 

27 th October , 1919. 

Yes, I read reports on that play by Arthur Shirley on 
Edmund Kean, produced lately in Manchester. I gather 
that it owed nothing to the old play by Dumas, first pro¬ 
duced in 1837, with Lemaitre acting the part of Kean. That 
play, as I told you, has not one word of historical truth 
in it; whereas Shirley seems to have founded his play on 
authenticated facts and indeed the facts alone make very 
poignant drama. 

If ever a human being suffered and by his indomitable 
will mastered adversity that man was Edmund Kean. He 
was of obscure parentage and though more than probably 
Jewish on one side he was descended through his mother 
from the Marquis of Halifax. His great-grandfather, 
Henry Carey, was the composer of the National Anthem 
and of the sweet ballad Sally in our Alley . As a small child 
he did odd jobs at Drury Lane where Miss Tidswell, the only 
friend of his childhood, was employed as a small part actress. 
He appeared in the Pantomimes—as a rabbit or other animal 
—and as a vision in Macbeth. As an imp in the Cauldron 
Scene he once got between Kemble’s legs and nearly threw 
him down ; a quarter of a century later he did it more 
effectively. 

Kean learned to dance from Bologna, the celebrated 
harlequin—to sing from Charles Dibdin—to tumble from the 
great Grimaldi ; he learned to box and fence from observa¬ 
tion and perfected himself by practice. He appeared at 
Richardson’s booth in Bartholomew Fair; and broke 
both ankles in the ring of Saunders’ circus. He walked 
to Portsmouth ; “ stowed away ” on a ship bound for Madeira 


254 


LETTER NUMBER FORTY FOUR 


—was discovered, made Cabin-boy, and, finding the 
office uncongenial, feigned deafness so that he was dis¬ 
charged as useless—and so cured of the sea. 

The accident to which, indirectly, he owed his chance at 
last was meeting with Doctor Drury, the Master of Harrow, 
who procured him tuition—probably at Eton (it is uncer¬ 
tain)—for two years when he was just under sixteen. 

After that he struggled against every kind of misfortune 
for ten years. His lack of business ability and quick temper 
were grave impediments to his progress. 

At twenty-one he married Mary Chambers of Waterford 
(where she had been a school-mistress) who was nine years 
his senior. The manager of the Gloucester Theatre where 
both were employed dismissed them in consequence ; and 
for six years they tramped the country with their two chil¬ 
dren, Howard and Charles. They played in tap-rooms and 
barns—even by the way-side. 

Eventually Kean met Doctor Drury again, who induced 
Arnold, the acting-manager of Drury Lane, to see Kean 
act. This filled him with high hope, but disappointment 
followed for delay succeeded delay. 

Meanwhile his favourite, little Howard, died and grief 
drove him to find solace in drink. This hereditary failing 
was the ultimate cause of his undoing, but it had in no sense 
impaired his powers when eventually his great opportunity 
came. 

I have told you how magnificently he took it. Shirley, I 
understand, avoids the great error of Dumas’ play in which 
(in Act IV) he shows Kean acting . This is an artistic 
mistake for no actor can or even will act as greatly as the 
author makes his audience feel his character of Kean can 
act. It is essential to persuade the public of this and their 


255 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


imagination can be—and in the play is—convinced of it. 
But when it comes to the scene in which they actually see 

it-Well, Lemaitre did not do it; even Kean himself could 

not have done it. 

Do you follow me ? Kean the actor might personate Kean 
the man on the stage; but even Kean the actor could not 
be great enough to superimpose the predicated greatness of 
Kean the actor upon his stage performance of Kean the man. 

It reminds me of the appalling error of making Trilby 
in the play sing. Du Maurier creates in his readers the 
certainty that Trilby, under Svengali’s hypnotic influence, 
sang as no human being had ever sung—or could. When, 
in the play, the actress attempts to realise this one says : 
“ Delightful! But Tetrazzini sings better,” and the whole 
illusion is marred. Trilby’s voice must be unearthly in 
its wonder. So in Dumas’ play, if Kean’s acting is not 
above the superlative the effect is inadequate. 

When Byron saw Kean as Sir Giles Overreach he had an 
epileptic fit. The actor who should attempt to show 
Kean’s acting on the stage to-day might give his audience 
excuse for another kind of lit—of laughter. 

From what I have told you of Kean’s waywardness don’t 
assume for a moment that there was anything slapdash 
about his method, ever. He was well educated, fluent, 
even graceful in his public speaking— presumably impromptu 
—could write a good letter and hold his own in any society. 
He studied his parts for years - spent as long as twelve 
hours at a stretch rehearsing alone before a pier glass. 
Poor Mary must have had a trying time, for he would make 
her sit in judgment of his efforts and effects as he rehearsed 
before her hour after hour. She would seem to have been 
a very helpful critic. 


256 


LETTER NUMBER FORTY-FOUR 


His abandonment of the traditional red wig of Shylock 
was no impulse of the moment, but in keeping with his 
practice in the new reading of the part which he had given 
in the provinces for years before he startled London with it 
at the Lane. He would never “ make anything do.” 
From childhood when, at about ten years old, he recited 
Hamlet, Norval or his favourite Richard, he was always 
most earnest and precise over readings and details of costume. 
He was an indefatigable student and an untiring worker. 

With all this I do not pretend that he was “ nice ” in 
the modern acceptation of the word ; he had no parlour 
tricks, and, I fear, no very good manners ; he was the 
born bohemian artist and it was by his art alone that he 
conquered. 

He must have been more than trying to live with, especially 
as Mary, after his success, developed a taste for the sweets of 
social superiority. “ Mary shall ride in her carriage,” 
he shouted in the first enthusiasm of his triumph, “ and 
Charlie shall go to Eton ; ” and he kept his word. But the 
house in Clarges Street became less attractive to him than 
the Coal-Hole in the Strand. He loved the society of his 
equals and had no stomach for patronage. 

But still, so far as I can discover, there is no shred of 
positive evidence to convict him in the Cox Case. Every¬ 
thing supports the theory that he was the victim of a plant. 
Alderman Cox had had several loans from him ; Mrs. Cox 
was a fascinating and designing woman, who exercised all 
her allurements to induce the wealthy actor—for he w^as 
very wealthy if w r e compare the value of money to-day v r ith 
its worth a hundred years ago—to compromise himself. 
For the sake of the good name of our greatest actor—since 
Burbage—I wish the Case of Cox v. Kean could be re-tried. 


257 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


I don’t think the Alderman would win his verdict and walk 
off with his £800 damages. 

The verdict, however, was against Kean and the Public 
hissed him from the stage, so that he was forced to flee to 
the United States, where, in some towns, he was similarly 
treated. 

Very few speeches delivered by actors or managers from 
the stage have ever equalled in simplicity and dignity that 
which Kean offered his public on his return to Drury Lane. 
He was reinstated in their favour and again triumphed in 
their affections : they could find no actor to compare with 
him. 

And his family : how did they welcome him ? 

I fear there is little doubt that Mary had become a snob 
—and Charles a prig. 

In Kean’s last illness his old friend—his only friend, so 
it would seem—Miss Tidswell nursed him. It is true that 
Mary visited him, in extremis , in response to his cry : “Mary 
come home ! ” 

The pathetic picture Helen Faucit has left us of the great 
tragedian, as she met him, when a little girl, near his cottage 
next the old theatre on Richmond Green where he passed 
his last years and died, is a sad comment on departed glory. 
Yet Kean’s short reign in absolute supremacy was perhaps a 
happier consummation than that which any other great actor 
has enjoyed. Better a sudden eclipse than “ to lag super¬ 
fluous,” forced by economic need to stay in the public 
eye and suffer the dissipation of dignity in past achieve¬ 
ment in the jeers of a new generation whose youthful 
superiority is always prone to scoff at the ghost df the great¬ 
ness their fathers revered. 

As he was sinking he sobbed out the name of his little 


258 


LETTER NUMBER FORTY-FOUR 


son Howard. And later as the fever rose : “ Give me 
another horse ! ”—“ Mary, forgive ; ” and so he passed. 

In certain roles —the greatest—“ no words can do justice 
to Kean’s acting.” It was above criticism ; it was Truth. 
Even in the parts, such as Hamlet, in which he was not 
uniformly perfect there were flashes of such genius as lifted 
them above the achievement of all others. “ He has the 
flash of the gem as well as its solid worth.” 

Would that this great spirit would condescend to “ re¬ 
visit the glimpses of the moon ” and make our night— 
glorious ! 

And now I have no time to tell you about Charles. Your 
question carried me back to his father who is so much more 
interesting. 

Yours, 


259 


LETTER XLV 


London 

1 7th November y 1919. 

I am sending you a copy of No. 1. Vol. 1 of The Piccadilly 
Review. I believe it will amuse you as it has me. But 
I fear—Oh, I fear ! Will it live until Christmas ? It hasn’t 
a vulgar allusion or a cretinous double-sense in its pages, 
yet it is published at threepence. It is written in good 
English for nice minds, yet its form does not proclaim it a 
rival of The Spectator , The Saturday Revieiv, or what The 
Athenaeum was. How could it — at the price ? There is 
its great mistake. To-day those who can afford no more 
than threepence for a luxury cannot afford even so much, 
and the mob whose cash seems inexhaustible would scorn 
a mere threepen’orth. More likely, they, to venture half-a- 
crown and then the matter would bore them. Anyway I 
shall take it so long as it survives if only for Professor 
Saintsbury’s Notes on a Cellar Book. To my mind that 
article is the most gorgeous bit of simple writing it has been 
my privilege to read this year. 

I take it everybody knows George Saintsbury’s History 
of English Literature , a most fascinating volume. I can’t 
pretend to be a student of his writings, and though this 
book contains much illumination on the Standard Drama 
I think he finds but little interest in the Theatre, though 
he once did a critique on Irving’s production of Othello. 
I remember a preface to what I thought an indifferent trans¬ 
lation of Splendeur et Miseres des Courtisanes but then Balzac 
doesn’t go well in English. It is here we meet that wonderful 
scamp the “ terrible and mysterious ” Vautrin, a character 
Lemaitre played in a dramatisation by Balzac himself. 
It was not a good play. Balzac was not a very successful 


360 


LETTER NUMBER FORTY-FIVE 


dramatist, indeed I know of only one good play of his, La 
Maratre —and what a part that would have been for Mrs. 
Kendal, or would be now for Miriam Lewes. 

His erudition—I have returned to the Professor— 
is catholic and inexhaustible and his personal charm as 
profound as his knowledge—though I do not speak from a 
personal acquaintance. But I met once some University 
magnates at Aberdeen who fell to talking of him over lunch ; 
though I fear his wonderful gastronomical flair —he is a 
gourmet of the most exquisite—was more the subject of 
discussion than his literary skill, of which, however, there 
was—and indeed is—no word more to be said. 

We ate very well indeed at that luncheon party, but what 
is the use of describing a menu to you ? For you Brillat- 
Savarin lived in vain ; you have no more interest in food 
than a woman, who may pretend she likes it in order to 
flatter us, but only really notices it when it is bad. She 
appreciates the Cafe de Paris because she can there exploit 
Poiret’s latest; her diamonds from Boucheron or Lacloche 
and her babioles of the Rue de la Paix y but her gastronomic 
attitude is an insult to the chef. 

I don’t blush to own that I have a palate of the most 
sensitive and a capacity of far more accommodation than 
my contours—or the lack of them—seem to promise. I 
adore good food but a “ cut from the joint and two 
vegetables ” simply appals me. In preference to envisag¬ 
ing that staple dish I would lunch with Sam Isaacs. Harris’s 
Sausages at the Cook-Shop, with onions and “ mashed ” 
invites : the joint at Simpson’s, even, does not allure me. 
The last time I was in the Cafe de Paris I invited the maitre 
d? hotel to prescribe for me. He suggested a steak and an 
omelette. I rejoined : “ I can get that in London. Je 


261 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


suis a Paris pour gouter ,” and thereafter fared excellently 
every day. But my words were not strictly true. I was 
in Paris on very different affairs of which I told you when 
we first met. When, I wonder, shall I behold the Arc de 
Triomphe once more ! 

I have written no more of the old actors for two reasons ; 
firstly, I fear to bore you with too much on the subject, 
and secondly, it is one that on occasions fills me with a 
great depression. I love the Theatre so that it grieves me 
more than I can express that what I most loved it for has 
now passed irrevocably. Who cares now for that grace 
and dignity of speech and gesture inseparable from the 
Grand Manner ? Not only is it lost, but even the conception 
of it is passing. No one under forty has seen even the 
shadow of it and can only conceive it vaguely. 

You may hear plenty of jokes about Vincent Crummies 
if the Grand Manner is mentioned, and the poor fools who 
indulge in them imagine themselves mighty clever in dis¬ 
crediting what they call an out-of-date convention, but they 
forget that to present classic figures modified by the manners 
of modernity is as heinous as to coat the sculptor’s marble 
with Aspinall’s enamel. A picture of life as it is under 
present conventions, when by training and habit we strive 
to conceal all emotion, can never be Truth. Codes of Manners 
pass, but elemental emotions are ingrain. To modernize 
—to colloquialize (as I have said I believe Garrick did) 
the passions is to falsify them, for they have had the same 
general expression in all periods. 

Those heartfelt and soul-stirring emotions dealt with 
by the imagination of Shakespeare ignore sublimely the 
petty forms of individual epoch, forms that are idiosyn¬ 
cratic rather than characteristic of the race. 


262 


LETTER NUMBER FORTY-FIVE 


Even the type capable of using the Grand Manner is 
passing. We find proof of this not only in the Theatre 
but at the Bar, in the Church. Statesmen, doctors, pro¬ 
fessors want that bearing—that grandeur of personal 
importance—that stature—that tournure that seems to have 
disappeared with the Victorian age. There was a nobility 
of brow and chin, almost common, that now you may search 
for in vain. Such heads were not covered by trilbys. 
Their figures have passed with the frock coats that were 
their fitting raiment. It would be impossible for me to 
picture my Father—or my uncle, who stood six feet four 
and was symmetrically proportioned—lolling in a lounge 
suit. The silk hat of civic respectability was as much a 
part of him as Caesar’s laurel wreath or Napoleon’s chapeau 
aux bords retrousses. 

Can you picture Macready in a boater ?—or Tennyson 
in a bowler ? 

Who is there to-day who can arrest attention by his 
recitation of ten lines of blank verse for the sake of the verse 
alone ? 

Basil Gill’s Brutus is perhaps the nearest we can get 
to-day to the kind of expression I mean. Dear Basil, who 
is typical Harris tweed. His Henry the Fourth is sonorous 
and dignified and he doesn’t listen to his voice ; the sole 
example I can recall of an actor with a fine voice who hasn’t 
been ruined as an actor by being told it is fine. But Gill is 
not a tragic actor. As King Henry he was right enough 
in the scene with Prince Hal, but with Hotspur in Act One 
he could not rise to the majesty of his anger. There, 
perhaps, Mollison was better, though he listened to every 
word he uttered and seemed all the time to be saying : 
“ Isn’t this a magnificent organ ? ” This fault quite 


263 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


spoilt his Pistol which might have been a great 
performance. 

But I am anticipating the conclusions I set out 
to draw for you. To do that I must continue my brief 
outlines of the work of our representative actors from the 
time Shakespeare created our Theatre and for as long as 
we had a Chief. So, as you ask me, I will go on where I 
left off when I write again. 

But these are anxious days. I must get some kind of 
work. I am so thankful Chris has something to do and I 
long to see her in her first leading part though I’m as nervous 
as a rabbit for fear I may not like her. 

Whether I get something or not is just a chance : it is 
not for a moment a question of ability. Tried and approved 
favourites — even Stars who have glittered to everyone’s 
satisfaction—are often without work to-day. 

Yours, 


264 


LETTER XLVI 


London 

29 th November , 1919. 

Writing of Macready’s contemporaries and successors, 
William Archer characterises the following as “ lesser men 
of a degenerate age ” : Wallack, Phelps, Vandenhoff and 
Charles Kean. 

Of these the first and third are interesting to us only 
as links of the past. Wallack, who played most of the 
Juveniles with Macready, was at his best with the Swash¬ 
bucklers, being excellent as Petruchio, Mercutio and Bene¬ 
dick. He migrated to the U.S.A. where he became very 
prosperous as D’Artagnan, Don Caesar de Bazan et hoc 
and established himself in management at Wallack’s Theatre, 
New York, where he is remembered as The Great Wallack. 
His son, Lester Wallack, worthily upheld the family 
tradition. 

It is not quite just, I think, to count Wallack as “a 
lesser man ” because he did not aspire to the grand roles ; 
nor will I agree that the early—and mid—Victorian era 
was “ a degenerate age.” 

John Vandenhoff was a tragic actor of the Kemble school 
—the last of any prominence—with all its faults and limita¬ 
tions. Like Kemble, he was much admired as Coriolanus, 
but it is well to note that they did not use Shakespeare’s 
play but a re-hash by Kemble himself of Shakespeare and a 
play on the same subject by James Thomson with emenda¬ 
tions by one, Wrighton, the prompter of Drury Lane. 
Vandenhoff was also a celebrated Iago, the one part in which 
it has been said he showed any trace of humour or humanity. 
He was the father of Miss Vandenhoff who created 
Parthenia in Mrs. Lovell’s Ingomar , the part in 


265 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


which the beautiful American actress, Mary Anderson, 
first captured London at the Lyceum in the early 
Eighties. 

But Phelps and Charles Kean are of the greatest interest 
to us for they preserve the monarchy of the Stage, if I 
may say so, in the direct succession. 

Not many years ago while playing in Portsmouth I jour¬ 
neyed to the little village of Catherington, about a mile 
beyond Horndean, and in the burying ground of the little 
Norman Church of St. Catherine’s—which is in itself almost 
a monument to departed Napiers—I found a stately oblong 
stone casket commemorating Mary Kean who died in 1849 
aged seventy ; Charles Kean her son—and son of the great 
tragedian—Eleonora his wife, who was a favourite actress 
as Ellen Tree before she became known to playgoers as 
Mrs. Charles Kean ; and Patty Chapman, their adopted 
daughter, who departed as recently as 1912. 

Charles Kean made his first appearance at Drury Lane as 
Young Norval in Home’s Douglas when he was barely sixteen, 
and ten years later, in 1837, created a sensation as Hamlet ; 
but he never fulfilled the high hopes then entertained of him. 
However, despite certain physical disadvantages—he spoke 
always as though with a very bad cold in his head, which 
would have disqualified him for the Theatre Franqais — 
he became our representative actor-Manager after the retire¬ 
ment of Macready, managed the Princess’ Theatre from 1850 
for about ten years and during that time gave most of the 
standard dramas in addition to many original plays. Under 
his management the run of a play was first established ; 
before his time twenty or at most thirty performances in 
a season of any one play marked it a huge success. The 
Lady of Lyons was repeated thirty times in its first year, 


266 


LETTER NUMBER FORTY-SIX 


though—as Macready admitted - for the first ten perform¬ 
ances to only “ half a Pit.” 

Charles Kean would not seem to have been a great actor 
in the Grand Manner. Of his Macbeth it is said that one 
had less the feeling of witnessing a combat with Fate than 
a bull-fight : his Othello was “ painstaking but inadequate ” ; 
Shylock was “ fairly effective.” As Richard, however, 
he reproduced all his father’s business, but so well assimi¬ 
lated that it seemed spontaneous and in the result was 
“ more than conventionally good.” But don’t forget that 
this was not Shakespeare’s but Colley Cibber’s Richard the 
Third . Wolsey was “ impressive ” ; Romeo had “ fine 
fire ” ; but Hamlet remained his solitary outstanding achieve¬ 
ment among the great tragic parts, though even of that 
Matthew Arnold said he “ wanted mind,” which to me seems 
the direct condemnation. 

In Comedy Charles Kean was more striking ; his Ford 
especially was praised for its clever admixture of agitation, 
perplexity and humour. But where he really excelled 
to the degree of original genius was in the composition of 
what are called Character parts—though to my mind every 
part is that and Hamlet is as much a character part as 
Touchstone. But the term has a special significance in 
theatrical jargon. It is used in contradistinction to 
Straight parts, which include many that are by no means 
straight; for example : all the Leads in Tragedy are called 
Straight. Of a new Shylock it might be asked : “ does 
he play it Straight or Character ? ” meaning, does the 
actor rely for his effect on his own personality and delivery 
in the ore rotundo or does he personate the character as he 
conceives it, varying pace and inflection to give it 
humanity and adopting pose and gesture consonant with 


267 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


such conception ? The first method though dependent 
almost entirely on natural gifts was certainly better thought 
of than the more human rendering. 

But the term Character is generally applied to such parts 
as Charles Kean made very strikingly his own, they were : 
Mephistopheles, the hero of Pauline (whose name I forget), 
the Corsican Brothers, and especially King Louis the 
Eleventh, which was adapted for him from the French 
verse play by Casimir Delavigne into more or less colloquial 
English. 

Fabien dei Franchi gives great scope for menacing in¬ 
tensity, in fact it is the note of the character ; and in Pauline 
there is a scene portraying a white heat of passion. Both 
of these Kean was able to express with a conviction so per¬ 
fect that he carried his audience off their feet. 

The eccentric humours, varied by outbursts of 
demoniacal fury, which characterise Mephisto make him 
almost certain of his effect—if the version used is 
tolerable. 

None of these parts is difficult. But Louis requires a 
very full equipment of experience and technique for its 
adequate portrayal. To the thoroughly accomplished 
actor the part is a gift, but even he won’t excel in it if he 
lack some very particular abilities. Indeed I do not know 
a more exacting part. I have read exhaustive criticisms 
of Kean’s performance and so have been able to recon¬ 
struct it scene by scene and compare it with Irving’s. I 
am obliged to admit that there can be no doubt that Kean’s 
portrayal of the wily Valois must have been nearer the truth 
than Irving’s. I mean more nearly a reproduction of the 
actual man ; nearer to artistic truth it would be impossible 
for anyone to approach—but we are not talking of Irving. 


268 


LETTER NUMBER FORTY-SIX 


Much has been said and written of Charles Kean’s 
Shakespearean productions—of his “ hanging the Drama on 
a clothes-peg.” One day we will talk about this—and of 
the disparaging criticisms of Irving’s method bracketed 
with Kean’s for condemnation. It is a large subject much 
discussed—especially by those who saw neither. 

Samuel Phelps, whom Macready brought from Bristol 
to join his company when he started his management at 
Covent Garden, commenced a season of Legitimate Drama 
at the suburban theatre of Sadler’s Wells in 1844. He was 
the first to take advantage of a new Act which allowed the 
great plays to be performed in minor theatres. It was not 
unlike Miss Bayliss’ venture at the Old Vic. though Phelps 
had the advantage of a strong personality in his Star 
and the co-operation of a company of recognised players— 
the Pit of those days were intolerant of the efforts of novices 
—including Mrs. Warner (late Miss Huddart) as his Leading 
Lady. 

During a season that lasted over eighteen years Phelps 
staged every play of Shakespeare’s except Titus Andronicus , 
Troilus and Cressida , Richard the Second and the three 
parts of Henry the Sixth , as well as many of the standard 
works, notably Sergeant Talfourd’s beautiful play Ion 
(originally produced by Macready) and The Bridal , expur¬ 
gated and elaborated by Sheridan Knowles from Beaumont 
and Fletcher’s The Maid's Tragedy , in which Betterton 
took his farewell as Melantius. My father saw most of 
these revivals and the impression I gained from his des¬ 
cription was that Phelps was a more intellectual edition of 
John Ryder, whom I remember well. I should be sorry 
to think this was all the truth, for a heavier actor than 
Ryder I have never seen and, on occasions, a more mono- 


269 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


tonous old bore I have never listened to. From the stand¬ 
point of lung power, though Ryder had what the old actors 
called “ a powerful organ,” Tom Mead could thunder 
him off the stage, but Mead was human and flexible ; Ryder 
was a block of granite and not the Aberdeen variety— 
that scintillates. I saw both of them as The Ghost and there 
was no comparison. Ryder I also saw as Colonel Damas 
and he had about as much humour as — Well, as old Arthur 
Stirling in the same part. I had also the good fortune to 
see the perfect performance of it by Fred Everill. 

Phelps it would seem had one grave fault: inordinate 
self-pity in pathetic passages. He was at his best when 
suffering under injustice or in furious resentment as, for 
example, in King and no King (Beaumont and Fletcher) 
in the character of Arbaces. 

He was the ideal Macduff. 

I think it is agreed that his very best work was done as 
Sir Pertinax MacSychophant in Macklin’s old play and as 
Falstaff, which, however, was too dry ; as Parolles, though 
I cannot conceive that his touch was sufficiently light; 
as Christopher Sly and Bottom the Weaver, both of which 
would seem to have been quite perfect; and as Justice 
Shallow (which he doubled with the King) in Henry the Fourth , 
Part II. 

His Macbeth was rugged and forceful and not open to 
the reproach once advanced against Macready’s rendering, 
that fine and classical as it was, it still suggested a “very 
respectable Scottish gentleman in conseederable deefi- 
culties.” His Lear and Othello were both intensely pathetic, 
in fact it was said of him that he sacrificed to pathos his 
vigour and dignity. His Melantius was very fine indeed, 
but in this play of The Bridal it would be impossible for 


270 


LETTER NUMBER FORTY-SIX 


any good actor to go wrong, the sympathy is so perfect. 
But Adrastus in /on, another noble and wonderful part, was, 
I should say—after Sir Pertinax—his greatest achievement. 

I have talked much of Phelps with two old friends both 
of whom appeared with him in many plays and are themselves 
among the best judges of plays and acting that I know, 
and their verdicts are strikingly contradictory. One assures 
me that the public to-day would not tolerate Phelps’ method, 
and if he was at all like John Ryder I can well believe it. 
But the other protests he was the finest actor within living 
memory—that his Macbeth and Othello were beyond criti¬ 
cism, even as my Father allowed were his performances of 
Bottom and of Sly. 

In 1862 Phelps retired from the management of Sadler’s 
Wells. He played afterwards at Drury Lane in sundry 
adaptations from Sir Walter Scott’s novels under the manage¬ 
ment of F. B. Chatterton, and I remember my father’s 
enthusiasm over his Job Thornbury, in a special perform¬ 
ance, with all the Stars in the cast, of John Bull at the 
Gaiety. 

Speaking of Phelps reminds me that in his company— 
not at Sadler’s Wells—was a Comedian named James Fawn, 
who afterwards became famous in the Music Halls, especially 
for his songs Ask a Policeman and His Lordship winked at 
the Counsel. I have heartily enjoyed both, which he sang 
with such rich and unctuous humour that their fame spread 
all over the Country ; the first, indeed, has added an idiom 
to the language. I saw Jimmy Fawn as the invaluable 
foil to Arthur Roberts in many Pantomimes at Drury Lane 
and always loved his jolly face and the flexibility of his art. 
In earlier days he had also been a member of lovely Marie 
Litton’s Old Comedy Company, when I fancy I remember 


271 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


his Diggory. He is an old man now, well over seventy, 
I should judge, but he still exercises his old spell in the Music 
Halls. 

Phelps’ management at Sadler’s Wells and Charles Kean’s 
at the Princess’ ended almost simultaneously in the first 
years of the Sixties and the English Drama had no Chief 
for a decade. I doubt, though, if even then its state was as 
ignominious as it is to-day. 

For heaven’s sake contradict me ! 


272 


LETTER XLVII 


London 

1 8th December , 1919. 

When I think that I remember the introduction of Golf, 
Bananas and Tomatoes (as food for humans) into this 
Country I feel very old. I mean, of course, the revival of 
Golf. The Sport of Kings was indulged by James the 
First and we may picture him discoursing learnedly with 
Steenie while putting at the Seventeenth. 

Bananas—or plantains, for I believe the bulk of such 
upon the market are in reality that same bread-fruit that 
sustained the Swiss Family Robinson in their many trivial 
trials and tempered tribulations—were introduced by 
Fyffe Elders (or is it Elders and Fyffe ?) who built a fleet 
with their profits on the traffic. 

Tomatoes, when I was a child, were used as table 
decoration “ because they were a pretty colour,” but 
their destiny was to feed the pigs. Autre temps , autre 
mceurs. 

These facts make me feel more andient than my recollec¬ 
tions of Boucicault as Con the Shaughraun as played at the 
Adelphi Theatre after a Pantomime in which Connie Gil¬ 
christ (Marchioness of Orkney) appeared as a child ! 
Connie Gilchrist, whom I can picture now, a slim and dainty 
fairy in gold-spangled black at the old Gaiety, long before 
Fred Leslie’s time. 

But Boucicault’s plays ! 

How wonderful they were—and are. But they will 
never be acted again. They are a unique possession like 
our Old English Comedy—not so valuable, of course, but 
quite as individual. What w r ould the public of to-day 
say of them could they see them acted as I have seen them ? 


273 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


I don’t hesitate to answer. I know. You would have to 
book your Stall three months ahead. The manager would 
make a fortune if he could find his actors ; that’s where the 
catch is—he couldn’t. 

I saw a revival of Arrah-na-Pogue (Arrah of the Kiss) 
some twenty-five years ago at the Princess’. We called it 
Arrah-no-brogue, because only one or two of the cast could 
manage the Irish accent. I had seen Mary Rorke as Arrah 
at the Adelphi years before : the freshest, creamiest Irish 
colleen with blue eyes and a cascade of chestnut hair, 
and her Story of the Kiss was one of the sweetest things I 
can remember. Then Charlie Sullivan was Shaun and 
Pateman Michael Feeney ; J. D. Beveridge (happily still 
with us) The O’Grady and John Carter The Secretary of 
State. Those were joyous days, joyous for public and 
actors alike. Refreshment and Invigoration ! 

At the Princess’ Ellaline Terriss was Arrah; pretty as a 
picture, but a picture rather of Red Riding-Hood than of 
an Irish peasant girl. Wilfred Shine was Shaun ; a clever 
actor, but lacking the fulness of geniality and lovable 
roguery essential to the character. Henry Neville was 
The O’Grady ; you know how I valued him, but I was sorry 
to see him in that part. He was as utterly wrong as Bever¬ 
idge was entirely right. Old Henry Bedford was the English 
Sergeant and perhaps gave the one satisfactory performance 
in a most disappointing production. 

But never shall I forget the group of Irish peasants ! A 
dirty crew they should have been and full of humour. 
In the last Act The O’Grady offers a reward to whomever 
will save the man who has fallen from the cliff into the sea. 
The rapscallions rush off to haul the derelict ashore and soon 
they crowd back shouting : “ We’ve got ’un ! ” 


274 


LETTER NUMBER FORTY-SEVEN 


“ Who is it ? ” asks The O’Grady. 

“ Michael Feeney ! ” yell the mob (Feeney is the Informer). 

“ I withdraw the reward ! ” says The O’Grady. 

“ Begorra, then we’ll go an’ shove ’un in agin! ” 
shriek the peasants as they scramble off. 

It is an episode which always delights the audience, who 
execrate the dirty little Informer as he deserves. 

But at the Princess’, if you please, these parts were 
played by young gentlemen of Bond Street mien and Covent 
Garden Fancy Ball habit—I speak of Bond Street and Covent 
Garden as they were in that day—and Lanagan and Oiny 
Farrell, the ringleaders, who should wear ragged shirts, 
torn pants, shock heads and broad grins were personated 
by Tom Kingston and L. (I forget what the initial stands 
for) Warner. The first won recognition as a Juvenile 
Lead—possibly because he played Lanagan on those lines ; 
the second was ultimately known to Fame (in Bond Street) 
as Cheiro the Palmist. Both were impeccable in fine linen 
with glossy locks surmounting (in the case of Cheiro) 
Apollonian features. The memory of his gently apologetic 
murmur : “ Ah, well, we will go and throw him back again” 
lives with me now—and now I see the humour of it; then 
it incensed me as the mention of Gladstone did my father. 
The worst of it is though, that an audience, knowing nothing 
of what should be, condemn a play—and its kind—because 
of such perversions. 

The Shaughraun is, I suppose, the best play of the series 
and The Colleen Bawn the prettiest, but Arrah w T as always 
my favourite. 

The Green Bushes by J. C. Buckstone belongs also to 
this type and I can recall two productions of it as vividly as 
those of the Boucicault dramas. The first was at the 


275 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


Princess’ with Henry Neville at his best as Connor O’Kennedy, 
Edward Compton as the villainous George (this was before 
he started his Company with the Old English Comedies), 
Shiel Barry as Wild Murtogh and Robert Pateman and 
Harry Proctor (slightly hunchbacked but most excellent 
actor) as Muster Grinnidge and Jack Gong, the parts 
originally played by Edward Wright and Paul Bedford, 
whose “ I believe you, my boy ! ” became as popular a 
saying as the “ Whoa Emma ! ” of my childhood. Bella 
Pateman was the Indian Miami who is eventually discovered 
to be a French Countess, a part written for the beautiful 
Madame Celeste. I remember particularly the lovely 
Florence Gerard as Geraldine, though I forget who played 
Nelly O’Neil. 

But “ what a change came o’er the spirit of my dream ” 
when I saw the revival at the Adelphi some thirty years 
ago. Frank Cooper lacked the panache of Neville. W. L. 
Abingdon was no doubt far better than Compton ; but 
Beveridge, excellent as he is, was not so good as Shiel 
Barry and John L. Shine and Lionel Rignold are not to 
be mentioned in the same breath with their predecessors. 
Pateman, by the way, I met only a few days ago, not per¬ 
haps as hale and hearty as ever, but looking wonderful 
when one considers his great age—he is in his eightieth 
year—and still radiating that aura of nervous intensity 
that he controlled so perfectly and used so skilfully as Quilp, 
Michael Feeney, Harvey Duff and Humpy Logan. Mary 
Rorke, whom I love dearly, was Miami at the Adelphi, but 
the part was outside her scope. She was essentially the 
Juvenile Lady as to-day she is the sweetest of Matrons ; 
devastating emotion it is beyond her to express. 

These plays are all built upon a sympathetic under- 


276 


LETTER NUMBER FORTY-SEVEN 


standing of Irish qualities, the good and the bad, and in 
them may be found the key of that eternal puzzle we call 
The Irish Question. Read them in the light of two facts : 
there were 835 Kings of Ireland and only one died in his bed 
—four or five were struck by lightning !—I don’t wonder— 
but the rest were either killed fighting or murdered, generally 
by their successors—only once did an Irish army beat the 
English in open fight and then only because the English 
General so despised his enemy that having marched his troops 
for twenty-four hours he lead them at once to the attack, 
disdaining the idea of rest and refreshment, as who should say: 
We’ll just polish off this job first. But the Irish, in over¬ 
whelming numbers—I think it was four to one—knowing 
their opponents’ condition stood up to them (for once !) 
and routed them. 

Irish regiments under English generalship have performed 
prodigies of valour ; English-Irish Generals (as Wellington) 
leading English troops leavened by Irish have under them 
what is probably the best fighting material in the world. 
But the native Irish instinct is for guerilla warfare— 
especially for sudden attack in superior force from cover. 

The typical Irishman subsists on excitement and cannot 
live without his grievance. 

Wild Murtogh’s “ Who’ll thread on the tail o’ me coat, 
it’s blue mouldy for the want of a batin’ ! ” expresses the 
type; and so does Con’s poetry and humour, though the 
average Irishman’s humour is not so conscious as the 
cowardice and venom of Michael Feeney or Corrigan. The 
O’Grady is a great gentleman but as wrong-headed as 
Myles-na-Coppaleen. None of them have sense of propor¬ 
tion and you cannot alter the characteristics of a race. 

If the World in council should ask Ireland, with every 


277 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


desire to gratify her longings and ambitions : What do you 
want to make you content ? The voice of Ireland if it 
spoke truth would reply : Content, is ut ? Sure, that’s the 
last thing we want! 

Chris returns on Sunday for four weeks vacation. She 
has been too far North all the Autumn for me to visit her, 
but I hope to see her play when the tour is resumed, unless 
—it is a remote possibility—I succeed in getting work. 
Something I must have. I will take almost anything that 
offers, though for my life I dare not publish the fact as you 
may well suppose. Still nothing is derogatory if it pays ; 
a vile philosophy, but expressive of the Twentieth Century. 

We shall do some theatres, Chris and I, while she is at 
home ; there is Harvey’s Hamlet to be seen again and Mos- 
covitch’s Shylock. 

Yours philosophically, 


278 


LETTER XLVIII 


London 

24 th December , 1919. 

I haven’t been able satisfactorily to digest your last letter, 
Redgie, not that you are obscure, but I have been absorbed. 
In what matters not. You shall know if it prospers, other¬ 
wise—Who cares ? 

As I grow old the difficulty of concentrating increases. 

You too complain that concentration is an effort. That 
should not be. You say : “ my mind is in a state of nebu¬ 
losity ,” which Webster tells us is the mist which surrounds 
certain stars : illumination, then, is at the centre of your 
state and I await the discovery of its effulgence. 

To quote you further : 41 It is agonizing this distracting 
knocking at the gate of consciousness of many subjects all 
falling over each other in the struggle for admittance.” 

To which I rejoin: Let nothing fash or faze you ; admit 
all who give the counter-sign, Vitalitas , in answer to your 
Who-goes-there ? Cultivate a habit of decision to-day even 
though to-morrow bring repentance. Manana is the 
evasion of the Indeterminate—correspondent to the Wait- 
and-See of the unprescient politician—who woos Morpheus 
on a restless pillow, finds cat-sleep with the sun-rise and 
sips early tea to soothe an aching head, murmuring Quien 
sahe ? a proper demand for no man till his curfew is tolling. 

Quick decisions induce refreshing sleep and a clear head 
at sun-rise rectifies the errors of yesterday. 

But I neglect your letter: “-Continuity,” you say, 
44 Continuity, all must be continuity if success is to be 
achieved.” 

Continuity of effort towards a single aim, I infer. Quite 
so. I agree—to a point; but I should grieve if you aban- 


279 


T 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


doned your numerous interests to concentrate upon one 
only. You appear to have a gift for immersing yourself 
for short periods in a given subject to the exclusion of all 
others—to be able to pigeon-hole it and take up a second 
with the same whole-hearted though most circumspect 
enthusiasm. For a young man this aptitude opens pit-falls. 
This is an age of specialization ; no one is allowed capable 
of excellence in more than one department and licence is 
admitted for that only if he fills it supremely well—or, 
let us say, well enough to pose as an expert. It is not quite 
the same thing, though it ought to be. In my opinion this 
is disastrous, but I recognise that I am in a hopeless minority. 

We all know the disability that attaches to Jack of all 
Trades, but the modern idea that one should specialize 
in but one branch of the selected Trade precludes mastery 
of it—in the sense in which the axiom was originally employed. 

There is happiness in Jackdom, it breeds a resourceful 
spirit and you, for one, find far more pleasure therein than 
you would ever know as the studious specialist you so 
admire and would emulate. 

In this last letter after most generously encouraging 
me to continue my sketches of actors—dry as I fear you must 
have found them—you touch upon at least half a dozen 
subjects, each of which "would easily furnish us with food 
for a week’s discussion—if we could preserve that sense of 
Continuity. Your favourite theme is, of course, Poetry, 
and it is a thousand pities that in addition to your gift 
you have not that wonderful development of business acu¬ 
men—like John Drinkwater, for example—that guides the 
possessor in the art of Boost. Personally I can’t regret 
it, because I know that quality inevitably suffers in the process 
—even as it does in the case of whiskey and cigars. Give 


280 


LETTER NUMBER FORTY-EIGHT 


me the unboosted brands ; if they can live at all in face of 
the strenuous competition of the grossly advertised it must 
be because of their quality. I never use Pears’ Soap. 

I have admitted to you frankly my obvious limitations as 
a critic of verse. I am rarely capable of separating the 
subject from the form and unless one can do so one’s opinion 
is valueless for form is everything in poetry and the matter 
concerns not a jot its poetical worth. Though I recognise 
this truth I still must be influenced by the subject-—which 
proves that I have no soul for poetry as such. It is rarely 
indeed that one happens upon verse that by sheer beauty 
of its form intoxicates as wine, or sweeps one into the thrall 
of a new sensation as Beranger’s Le Roi d'Yvetot or Victor 
Hugo’s Gastibelza. One does not find the inspired simpli¬ 
city of “ Le vent qui vient a travers la montagne rrCa rendrai 
foil” many times among the countless volumes of pretentious¬ 
ness. I have found it in Herrick and Lovelace ; but I 
suspect myself always of being moved by the sentiment 
even when I find beauty in the form. 

Listen to this 

“ I envy no mortal tho’ ever so great 
“Nor scorn I a wretch for his lowly estate, 

“ But what I abhor and esteem as a curse 
“ Is poorness of spirit, not poorness of purse.” 

That pleases me and I believe because of the form—though 
“ abhor ” is anti-climax, for it is stronger than what follows. 

And this (which you will wisely prefer) :— 

“ What if the world, with a lure of its wealth, 

“ Raise thy degree to great place of high advancing ; 

“ May not the world, by a check of that wealth, 

“ Bring thee again to as low despised changing ? 


281 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


“ While the sun of wealth doth shine 

“ Thou shalt have friends plenty ; 

“ But, come want, they repine, 

“ Not one abides in twenty. 

“ Wealth (and friends) holds and ends, 

“ As thy fortunes rise and fall; 

“ Up and down, smile and frown, 

“ Certain is no state at all.” 

I should like to have written that; though I should have 
worried horribly over “ advancing ” and “ changing ” 
—but then I’m no poet. 

It is your poetic instinct that has aroused in you a certain 
interest in the Drama because the greatest poets are essen¬ 
tially dramatic ; but your interest is ideal ; though you 
love the Drama you despise the Stage and there is much to 
commend your judgment. 

Your skill in Music and Drawing would be perpetual 
reproaches to you were it not for that faculty of pigeon¬ 
holing, for each clamours to be developed as it might and 
should be. I have heard pianists of the first order who might 
envy you your touch and I have heard none who can pluck 
such harp-like chords in arpeggio from the piano on occasion. 

The ease with which you sketch the unmistakable portrait 
of an absent friend or acquaintance or of some figure who 
has arrested your attention in the street is most enviable. 

But I think the gift I envy most is your clairvoyant 
ability to read character from hand-writing. I shall never 
forget the amazing result of sending you the menu of a cer¬ 
tain luncheon party signed by the six participants. It was 
incredible that you did not know one of them even by name 
and yet could read in most intimate detail not merely their 
salient characteristics but precise minutiae of their qualities. 


282 


LETTER NUMBER FORTY-EIGHT 


Yes, you must preserve your Jackdom, Redgie; foster 
your historical sense, indulge your instinct for sport and the 
wanderlust. 

I think of your experiences I envy most your knowledge 
of the Continent; Switzerland, Norway, Italy, the Rhine¬ 
land and - above all—the Chateaux of the Loire. How I 
longed for all that — once ! 

Then, too, I would I had your adaptable spirit which can 
rid^ the storm and—what is perhaps more difficult—subdue 
the dank apathy of a Scotch mist. Ah, well, I have still— 
D.V. — a few years to go and Hope is not the monopoly 
of the Miserable—Ambition, when it is worthily inspired, 
does not always “ fall on the other”— I know that “ chance 
may crown me without my stir”; I know also that may is the 
emphatic word. The wise expect the least possible of Chance. 

To-morrow is Christmas Day. 

I envy you—I am doing little else, it seems, to-day—an 
old-fashioned Christmas at home with your Mother and 
Sister. May you all be very very happy ! 

As for Chris and me, we shall dine at some restaurant. 
I hate it but the atmosphere will be amusement for the child; 
Frascati’s (for instance) is cheery contrast to a dull round of 
provincial lodgings ,* linoleum-covered floors, horsehair 
arm-chairs and lace window-curtains—probably saffron- 
tinted ! Appalling! 

Chris would willingly keep me company by our fire¬ 
side —at least she says so. I wonder. 

To tell the truth convincingly often needs as much tact 
as to invent diplomatic falsehood. 

With no intent to deceive, a woman must always be a 
mystery to a man. That does not mean that she must lie 
to him as so many think essential. 


283 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


But how delightful to know her the soul of Truth and yet 
improbable. 

No man worth the name deceives any who trust him ; 
trust is a tie that binds, for honesty. But to be distrusted 
invites ingenuity to warrant that distrust. 

But I wander from Chris. She does not hanker for flesh- 
pots but she likes what she calls Fun. So do I. 

But where to find it in these days ? I don’t war^t to 
drink—over-much, nor to indulge in any excess but there is 
little fun in 1919. 

Hysteria in plenty ; much decadence in Form ; much 
flaunting of stark shoulder-blades and impudent backs; 
much monocled criticism of indiscreet lingerie; much 
popping of ginger-ale corks ! 

Pussyfoot rampant—with his sly intemperant wink. 

I find littl efun in the amende joys of teetotal debauchery. 

But I wish you merry. 

Yours especially, 


1 


LETTER XLIX 


London 

30 th December , 1919. 

One fears drifting into a habit because one grows apt 
thereby to function without sensing; as example, note the 
way nearly everyone starts a letter. Though they may vary 
it for different correspondents, they form the habit of address¬ 
ing the same person always in identical terms, which after 
a while become meaningless because mechanical. If Eliza 
always w r aves her handkerchief to John as he turns the corner 
the day comes when neither her signal nor his answering 
smile mean anything at all. Your own dictum that to 
preserve vitality in interest is the only means of 
fighting habit is irrefutable, for interest dies as habit 
grows- stultified. 

“ Familiarity breeds contempt ” simply because familiarity 
is stagnation and stagnation is the first stage of decay. If 
the afore-mentioned John invariably brings home a bunch 
of flow r ers for his Eliza the day inevitably arrives w hen he 
presents and she accepts mechanically—without thought 
of the meaning, which, indeed, the gift has lost. Eliza 
accepts unconsciously, even the florist has the bunch ready ; 
John flings his coin on the counter, thinking how r he will 
circumvent Robinson at to-morrow’s board meeting, takes 
up the bouquet and forgets even that he has entered the 
shop till, in a pause as he is held up on the kerb by a passing 
car, he perceives it in the accustomed hand. 

I believe we have happened here upon one of the chief 
causes of disruption in the marriage state, a cause as fruitful 
of disaster as the hackneyed incompatibility. Yet as we 
age the struggle to avoid becoming groovish grows increas¬ 
ingly difficult and to be aw are of it is a sign of conscious decay. 


285 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


But my avoidance of the formula “ My dear-Who- 

ever-it-may-happen-to-be ” is no mere affectation. I 
have never used it for my friends since I could think. 
I keep it for acquaintances—and the tax-collector, and I 
hope the last appreciates the irony. 

So your local Play Society invites you to head the opposition 
at its next debate. Your notes are admirable and if you 
were to open the proceedings you could put up a fine fight 
on the lines they suggest. But the case is different. You 
cannot prepare your speech unless the proposer will first 
allow you to read his ; for how is it possible to refute in 
advance arguments that one has never heard. You must, 
of course, speak extempore. Your position is stronger than 
your opponent’s for this reason ; he is to hold forth on the 
text. The Theatre of To-day as a Cultural Force is a Failure ; 
as it is an axiom in logic that a negative is incapable of proof 
your affirmative has the better logical possibility. Your 
difficulty will be, I anticipate, to keep your opponent to 
the point; he is certain to venture on to your ground unless 
he has a very sure logical sense. The rules of procedure 
are always stumbling-blocks to the illogical. 

It is by no means easy to prove failure—financial failure, 
yes ; but cultural failure ! Oh, Mesopotamia ! Cultural is 
a blessed word. I am glad the dictionary dubs it recent 
and rare ! 

Most argument is stultified by fallible assumption. Watch 
him ! His examples will be sure to confound his thesis. 
Note his interpretation of his evidence. The rules of evi¬ 
dence never vary, no matter what the subject, but the inter¬ 
pretation may be as false as the testimony of the lying witness. 
Watch him, I say ! Keep your mind alert as the ears 
of a fox-terrier whose master has whispered Rats ! 


28 G 



LETTER NUMBER FORTY-NINE 


And if he falsely interprets pounce on him and break 
his back. 

But remember it is as feeble not to acknowledge conviction 
when faced with sound argument as not to hold to it when 
it is logically based. 

The debate is a good move. Play Societies read too 
much and discuss too little. Then, too, they generally 
select undramatic plays and imagine they know all about 
the Drama because they have considered certain problems, 
mostly unwholesome, and reached tentative conclusions on 
the pseudo-social questions that such plays usually propound. 
A play is not a play until it is acted and if it won’t act it 
is never, properly speaking, a play at all. 

Your reflections on Success are illuminating, but in my 
view its worth must be determined altogether by its quality. 
To “ get there ” unworthily is not success ; it may, in fact, 
be the result of dire and horrible failure. Where is the use 
of winning the height if your standard is in the ditch ? 
The way to enjoy life is to take firmly one’s place in the world 
as a right , the place that is indisputably one’s own. Others 
are always willing to concede it if one is firm—really knows 
what one wants and is able to hold it with a proper sense of 
proportion. This last is the great difficulty : to reconcile 
what is due to oneself with what is due to others. But as, 
in justice, we would deny to no man the reward of his deserv¬ 
ing, so if we are confident in our own we know we wrong 
none by taking it. 

Pouring with rain and London not so full as it has 
been. Theatres doing poorly. Covent Garden almost 
empty, I hear. Harvey should have opened his season 
with The Only Way and so rallied round him all 
his old admirers before challenging the critics with a 


287 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


new and, as I gather, somewhat bizarre production 
of Hamlet. 

The weather is the worst for playgoers ; in ’buses and 
Tubes they are packed like grain in a sack and the supply 
of taxis insufficient by ninety per cent. If one does not 
possess a car and is not inclined to walk one stays at home. 

Frankly I detest the notion of the all-woman cast for 
Hamlet. Recognised Stars—I mean woman Stars—have 
played him for a century but they did not venture with all¬ 
woman support. The idea is part of the modern topsy- 
turvication and is more than a little unwholesome. The 
Queen must suffer by a female husband and son—to say 
nothing of poor Ophelia’s sufferings by a female father, 
brother and lover. 

And as for female grave-diggers—“ Angels and Ministers 
of grace— ” ! 

During the war there may have been excuse for male 
impersonation at the Old Vic. and elsewhere, but such 
excuse no longer exists. 

The Divine Sarah made her great mistake in Hamlet. 
Women forget that man’s dress emphasises their womanish¬ 
ness as it destroys their womanliness. 

True that Hamlet has a deep streak of the feminine, but 
what of his deeper virility ? The sweetness, gentleness and 
lovable qualities of Hamlet have in them nothing of effemi¬ 
nacy. 

I do not count sustained introspection as a feminine 
quality and I doubt a woman’s power to suggest it. 

I can think of but one great role —that a woman might 
attempt—a shade worse in woman’s hands and that is 
Romeo. Romeo is on occasions so perilously near to effemi¬ 
nacy that nothing less than innate manliness can save him. 


288 


LETTER NUMBER FORTY-NINE 


You may remind me of the success of Charlotte Cushman 
and, comparatively recently of Esme Beringer, but mannish 
as they may have been in the passages of love-sickness, 
vacillation and youthful enthusiasm, I cannot believe 
that any woman could rise to the height of passionate, 
male rebellion in the scene with the Friar or plumb the 
depths of manly despair in the last Act. 

Though no actor of accomplishment can fail to make 
Hamlet interesting if he will be simple where he should and 
interpret where he must, I remember Irving too clearly 
to be satisfied with anything less than he gave us. 

Later. New Year's Eve. 

Oh, those old Lyceum days ! 

I am sick at heart when I reflect that they are gone for ever ! 
—that anything like them is no longer possible. The veil 
is rent; the holy of holies desecrated by the glare of electric 
light and the stare of penny-a-liners ; the spirit exorcised. 

I am sitting by an almost extinct fire. Chris, I hope, is 
sleeping. We have been to Sloane Square to see The 
Merchant of Venice , Heaven help us ! 

The poor child learned at school almost to hate the beauti¬ 
ful play. This experience has not taught her to love it. 
She will see it again, she says, only if I again play Shylock. 
To-night I don’t feel that I ever wish to. 

Portia wasn’t there, and—O Nerissa ! A lady new to me, 
Miss Edith Evans, spoke the lines, but Nerissa didn’t exist. 
Jessica (Miss Cathleen Nesbit) was excellent and her scene 
(usually omitted) with Launcelot—perfectly played by Miles 
Malleson, the best Shakespearean clown I have seen for 
years—was the best thing in the play. 

Maurice Moscovitch was the Shylock. He is new in the 


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West End ; he has played in Yiddish in Whitechapel and 
before that for twenty years in America. He is a German, 
I understand, by name Roser, but a Russian—or Polish— 
name is no doubt more discreet in the light of recent events. 

He is a clever actor with an admirable technique, fine, 
robust presence and voice, but with a strong accent. 

But Shy lock— 

Any interpretation that does not combine the classic 
with the natural method must fall short of the truth—this 
is, of course, true of all Shakespeare’s characters. 

Shylock is the classic embodiment of a supreme artist’s 
conception of the sublimity which attains its highest expres¬ 
sion in the Oriental governed by a ruthless passion. He 
is neither a Teutonic usurer in a fit of epilepsy nor a Hounds- 
ditch pawn-broker jazzing on the Rialto. 

Here was no Chapter of Genesis. 

The Eighties would have hissed the whole thing off the 
stage. 

I applaud the Eighties ! 

Happiness in the New Year for you and yours. 

“ Fortune play upon thy prosperous helm.” 


290 


ERRATUM 


The statement on Page 290 that Mr. Maurice Moscovitch 
is a German by name Roser is incorrect. He was in fact 
born in Russia of Russian parents and is an American citizen. 
The publisher deeply regrets any inconvenience that the inclusion 
of the statement may have caused Mr. Moscovitch. 























LETTER L 

London 

14 th January , 1920. 

On the 31st of October, 1874, London acclaimed the Hamlet 
of Henry Irving. 

Irving had already carried the town with his Digby 
Grant in Two Roses and Mathias in The Bells. Hamlet 
set the seal upon him as the pre-eminent actor of his time. 
And since that day, I dare assert, no actor has arisen whose 
work can stand the test of comparison with Irving’s. 

By his performance of Hamlet Irving shed new light in 
the same sense as Kean had done with Shy lock sixty years 
earlier. 

As Kean vivified the statuesque so Irving humanized the 
artificial. 

It was the Human Touch once more. 

Though the ponderous method of past generations was 
eschewed, no beauty nor grandeur of the verse was slurred 
or blurred and all was touched with a princely dignity 
and a classic grace, yet there was no suspicion of that frock- 
coated modernity or casual flippancy that has marred the 
efforts of so many of his successors. 

I could write reams about Hamlet without attempting to add 
anything—which for me would be impossible—to the vol¬ 
umes of erudition that have been written on the subject 
but simply to tell you of certain views I hold gathered from 
my experience and observation of performance of the 
character. 

Louis Calvert wished to prove conclusively that Hamlet 
was mad so he wrote a book and then gave a performance 
to illustrate his theory. 

Unfortunately I missed it—and so, I fear, did he ; for 


291 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


had he made his point the world must have rung with the 
news. 

Irving was my first Hamlet and I admit that first impres¬ 
sions are apt to bias judgment, but I can recall certain de¬ 
tails with absolute clearness and I have never seen a Hamlet 
since who could sustain comparison in any of those details. 

Lest you think I may have been too young in 1874 to 
judge I must tell you that I refer to the Lyceum revival of 
1878—and subsequently—for my impressions. 

I have attempted the part myself. I know the pitfalls 
and the hurdles. I think I could take anybody through 
the play and tell them what to do and what to avoid in 
order to attain the effect that Irving made. Not to teach 
him voice production and elocution, bien entendu —I should 
as soon think of supplying a boot-black with brushes and 
blacking—but, to follow the simile, to show him how to put 
on the shine. 

Irving used his personality, of course ; that does not mean 
that he did not personate. He did. It was no mere 
exploitation of Henry Irving, though, but a highly skilled 
technical exposition, developed by a soul of understanding 
and illumined by genius. 

Intellectuality can express itself for expression is part 
of itself, but it cramps imagination. I count it better 
to possess imagination without intellectuality to express 
it than to possess a large intellectuality and have nothing 
but commonplace to express. 

But suppose intellectuality brought to the aid of imagina¬ 
tion—that is, after imagination has had full play ! 

That is how—and I believe why —Irving triumphed. 

I have seen the perfect intellectual Hamlet. 

I have seen more than one imaginative Hamlet. 


292 


LETTER NUMBER FIFTY 


Irving is the only Hamlet I have ever seen, who, having 
given full rein to his imagination, controlled and co-ordinated 
all by his intellect. 

But Irving was a great interpreter. He knew that per¬ 
fection is never attained ; yet he had striven and attained 
more skill in it than any actor of my time. Moreover his 
“ infinite pains ” were lit by the spark of intuition, that in¬ 
born actor-sense. 

Irving was the only actor I have seen who identified him¬ 
self so with the character that you could accept him in every 
phase of it as indeed the man he personated. What I mean 
is that you never thought of him as Irving but only as Ham¬ 
let ; and to this day when I think of Hamlet I think of him 
as Irving showed him. He was not ideal pictorially, but 
what he was not he suggested so perfectly by a courtliness 
so gracious— a fate-laden sense so tragic— a pity so profound 
— an exaltation so spiritual that you accepted that husk 
as the ideal because it held the soul of the ideal you pictured. 

Hamlet is the actor’s surest investment; no actor can 
fail in it, it is actor-proof. Understand what that implies 
—tf cfor-proof! 

This is not to belittle the accomplishment of any actor 
who can bring something to his performance above and 
beyond the effect that mere performance of it must create. 
It would be presumption in me to try to add to what Quiller- 
Couch and others have written on this subject. I know 
you have Quiller-Couch’s book. 

But the amazing thing about Hamlet is the effect that 
may be created by the actor who does not act at all but just 
says the w r ords. 

Chris and I have just been to Co vent Garden to see 
Martin Harvey and on that particular evening he certainly 


293 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


did no more. He spoke the text—more of it than usual— 
many scenes in settings of curtains so glaring that they dis¬ 
tracted attention from the action, but the grip of the play 
was there, though to me it was painful to sit still while 
so much of the drama was dissipated and the tragedy 
omitted. 

The best Ophelias I have seen — except Ellen Terry — 
have always been too old. The first of these was a fine 
actress, Louise Moodie. The part is a very easy and grate¬ 
ful one, yet it requires considerable art to squeeze the last 
drop out of it. The Mad Scene is a gift. None can fail 
in that. I think Mrs. Harvey is quite the best now that 
I have seen her a third time—the first time I thought 
her dreadful. This time I could find no fault with any single 
point of her performance. 

Mrs. Tree was tame to a degree. Ophelia is pale, if 
you Avill ; grey-eyed, blonde-cendree, but not colourless. 

I speak, understood, of the days when she was Mrs. Tree 
and remember with gratitude her brilliant Mrs. Murgatroyd 
in Sydney Grundy’s A Bunch of Violets , adapted from 
Octave Feuillet’s Montjoye, at the Haymarket; and much 
later, and most especially, her splendid Agrippina in 
Stephen Phillips’ Nero at His Majesty’s, a performance 
more nearly in the Grand Manner than any I have seen 
for many years. 

But I was talking of Ophelia: Mrs. Patrick Campbell 
was physically and temperamentally unsuited. Who could 
think she would not be ? However, she played it with 
F orbes-Robertson. 

I have referred above to the perfect intellectual Hamlet. 
I was thinking of Forbes-Robertson. It would be quite 
impossible to imagine a more perfect reading than he gave ; 


294 


LETTER NUMBER FIFTY 


every line was spoken with a nicety so flawless that as it 
fell on the ear it satisfied by its perfect modulation as the 
rhythm of lapping waves. But there was never a spark— 
never a thrill—never a note of exultation or the crash of 
passion. 

Forbes-Robertson recited Hamlet to perfection. Irving 
felt Hamlet. You could see the thought stabbing him 
before he gave it breath, and that gave his performance a 
novelty and reality as striking as it was original. 

The part had been intoned—vocalized—thundered. It 
had been acted for point-making—as I have seen it since 
with excellent effect. The play never fails with a popular 
audience when thus interpreted. It never before had been 
thought aloud ! 

Consider: until he meets Ophelia Hamlet does little 
else but think aloud. Obsessed as he is by one idea, it is 
only his excessive gentleness and courtesy that detach him, 
so to say, from his obsession to hold converse with his inter¬ 
locutors. There are points in plenty for whomever cares 
to make them, but Shakespeare can take care of that if the 
actor will leave it to him. This is what Irving did; he 
was intent on revealing the soul of the character which so 
far is not stirred to action. 

In the four great scenes of Act III he showed us that soul 
in contact with the world—the Court—the two women 
he loved and his enemy : and in each scene he struck sparks 
that illumined. 

None ever illustrated so vividly the tenderness of Hamlet’s 
passion for Ophelia. 

None ever spoke less pedantically and didactically the 
Advice to the Players, which became a conference of artists 
rather than authoritative injunction to subordinates. 


295 


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LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


None was ever more electrically triumphant in the success 
of the Mousetrap. 

None imbued with more tragic solemnity tempered by 
filial piety the midnight interview with his Mother. 

In this last scene was no picture either of Claudius or 
the dead King, nor did Hamlet wear a medallion of his 
father at his neck ; “ this picture—and this ” were “ in 
the mind’s eye ” and so I have always seen them most vivid. 

Before his first appearance challenged the criticism of 
London Irving had played the King, the Ghost, Laertes, 
Horatio, Osric, Guildenstern and the Priest, not to mention 
the part of Hamlet himself in Edinburgh and in Manchester. 
It is certain that he did—or omitted to do—nothing in 
his performance without most careful study and deliberation. 

I remember a small example of what actors call business 
that may interest you :— 

The Queen (Miss Pauncefort, Mother of the present 
Georgina Pauncefort, the last of our Mrs. Malaprops, Mrs. 
Candours and Mrs. Hardcastles) carried a fan of peacocks’ 
feathers, defying an old theatrical superstition—Augustus 
Harris once seized a lady by the shoulders and rushed her 
off the stage and out of the stage-door, breathlessly, be¬ 
cause she arrived for rehearsal at Drury Lane with peacocks’ 
feathers in her hat, saying : “ Go home and never dare 
again to enter my theatre in that hat! Do you want the 
play to be a failure ? ”—but I am wandering. 

During the Play Scene Irving as Hamlet plucked a feather 
from his Mother’s fan, retaining it unconsciously, and 
in the climax found his inspiration for the line :— 

“.and now reigns here 

“ A very very—pajock!” 

as he flung it from him, subsiding into the vacant throne. 


296 



LETTER NUMBER FIFTY 


I have known actors resort to many devices to help this 
climax but none more aptly conformable to the text. 

It is perhaps altogether in Irving’s favour that I cannot 
tell you what he did at every point. What he did was 
always and inevitably the right thing—the natural thing—- 
the only thing, so it seemed, that was possible. He was 
not merely great at moments but great in that he main¬ 
tained the highest level of excellence throughout the per¬ 
formance of his very noble and beautiful conception. 

But I haven’t expressed what I conceive to be the parti¬ 
cular excellence of his embodiment. 

I will try. 

There is a quality essential in the ideal impersonation of 
Hamlet, a quality of pure spirituality; mystic, ascetic, 
ethereal, which it is as important to emphasize as the courtly 
grace, the dignity, the humour, kindly and mordant, the 
moments of decisive action and the sudden bursts of 
passion. 

This quality Irving possessed in a degree so marked that 
its hypnotic influence, which attracted while it hedged him, 
arrested, fascinated—riveted the attention to the exclusion 
of all surroundings wherever he might be. And for this 
he was heartily hated by some. No man, I suppose, had 
ever more venomous and unscrupulous enemies. And 
indeed some, even, of the unprejudiced might feel such 
remoteness—such isolation of personality in a sense repellant. 
But in Irving’s case it was allied to a gentleness so human, 
a generosity so boundless, a princely urbanity so gracious 
that he won hearts even though he seemed of another flesh. 

As Hamlet he used this quality with a perfection of artistic 
restraint and technical precision and the result in conjunction 
with his other abilities made his performance such as I 


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LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


cannot believe was ever seen before and—if only for technical 
reasons—I am quite certain can never be seen again. 

Lest you should consider this too sweeping I will merely 
say that in his years of training at Edinburgh, Manchester, 
Dublin and elsewhere Irving played 588 parts this before 
he was twenty-nine years of age. Such experience it is 
absolutely impossible for any actor to obtain to-day. 

I shall try to tell you how Irving harnessed, so to say, 
this extraordinary spiritual quality and used it in other 
roles —though never twice in exactly the same sense. But 
talking of Hamlet to-day has concentrated my thoughts 
on Irving and the many actors I have seen in the part. Yet 
to think of them is to remember only Irving. Ilis majestic 
spirit o’ertops them all and breathes—without the need 
of utterance— 

“.This is I— 

44 Hamlet the Dane ! ” 


2t>8 



LETTER LI 


London 

2 5th January , 1920. 

I expect you know the story of the Scot, who, arriving 
at King’s Cross, accosted the first policeman he saw with : 
“ Wull ye no direct me tae the Caledonian Asylum.” The 
reply was : “ Mon, ye’re in it.” 

I don’t know what made me think of that—with whiskey 
at its present prohibitive price—unless it was a subconscious 
recollection of our first meeting in the North. 

But, indeed, I love the Scots. I have always found them 
so generous, gracious and full of humour and I value those 
qualities in them the more that they are a discriminating 
race and I find that dourness of which many complain merely 
a cloak adopted for purposes of observation—of reconnoitring 
as one might say—before committing themselves to a friend¬ 
ship or even an intimacy. 

As audience for a play I have found the public of Edin¬ 
burgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen the most discriminatingly 
appreciative in the Country. 

Sir Walter Scott makes Louis the Eleventh say of Quentin 
Durward : “ Proud as a Scot: the proverb never fails.” 

Dumas calls the Scots “ the Gascons of the British Isles.” 

Chicot was a Gascon and so was D’Artagnan and Capitaine 
Fracasse, who was Monsieur le Baron de Sigognac du Chateau 
de la Misere. 

I think Straforel must also have been, though I forget 
whether Rostand refers to his origin. 

And the Gascons can’t be translated into English. In 
my opinion nothing French can be, one must feel it. But 
to me the Gascon is a very fine fellow—the braggart, with 
humour, who is as good as his word and a bit better. He is 


299 


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the ideal swashbuckler ; and Shakespeare, I feel, had always 
a very warm corner in the capaciousness of his poetic heart 
for the swashbuckler. 

He has given us, in the best known plays, four notable 
examples: Benedick, Mercutio, Gratiano and Petruchio, 
and of these Happy Dick is typically English. 

Oh, yes, I know he is “ Signor Benedick of Padua ” ; 
but whether it was by design that he alone of all the cast 
was given an English name—if we except the Clowns—and 
whether he was so named to mark him English adventurer 
among the Messinians I do not know. 

It would certainly be a mistake to play Benedick with a 
foreign accent—as Cartwright played the Italian villain 
in In His Power ; the scene being in Paris and all the charac¬ 
ters talking (supposedly) in French, he spoke with an accent 
when he was assumed to be talking French and without it 
when, presumably, he was speaking in Italian. Interesting 
but more than a little confusing. 

But this would not do for Benedick. Signor Mountanto 
is British to the backbone. 

Irving was the only Benedick I have seen. I have watched 
others in the part; Matheson Lang, Murray Carrington, 
George Alexander—they were all English enough, English 
to stodginess. 

Irving was a great comedian. His touch was light but 
firm; his wit sparkled ; his humour was effervescent and 
contagious ; he had a rare faculty for inviting—nay, com¬ 
pelling his audience to share the joke with him. As Benedick 
he was at his best. 

The Lyceum production of Much Ado About Nothing in 
1883 was the most satisfying thing I have ever seen at any 
time in any theatre. The cast was flawless. Ellen Terry 


300 


LETTER NUMBER FIFTY-ONE 


surpassed herself; her Beatrice was the triumph of her career 
and in all the cast there was not a performance that could 
have been bettered with the single exception of the Don 
John of that most admirable actor Charles Glenney, who 
was a thought too heavy. Excellent comedian as he was, 
his heavy manner—in that part, at least—was a trifle 
stodgy. Don John is always a problem. H. B. Irving 
came near to solving it in the St. James’ production, but 
did not quite succeed. 

But the others—I will tell you another time about the 
production as a whole. I want to talk now of Irving as 
Comedian. 

I can’t remember whether he used the traditional gag for 
the Curtain on the Church Scene. I expect so. Beatrice 
repeats to Benedick—after his final line in the text—“ Kill 
him ! Kill him ! ” (sometimes : “Kill him dead ! ”) and Bene¬ 
dick replies : “ As I’m alive I will! ” I am not defending 
it, I don’t approve gagging in Shakespeare. But Exeunt 
severally is at times a trifle dissatisfying; those two added 
lines do clinch the situation. 

I remember Irving most clearly on his first entrance. Who¬ 
ever was seeing the play for the first time and had never 
read it would know that those two, Benedick and Beatrice, 
must come together. They were made for each other. 

“ What, my dear Lady Disdain, are you yet living ? ” 
is a phrase as endearing as expressive. In Irving’s mouth 
it was a humorous caress. 

“ I cannot endure my Lady Tongue.” Quite so. Till 
the moment of Beatrice’s approach he has been alone with 
his friends to whom he has too deeply committed himself 
misogynist, though without any sort of real conviction, to 
recant—“ talking through his hat ” as we might say to-day. 


301 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


That wonderful spiritual quality of Irving served him 
well—as ever. However biting the tone of his raillery, the 
innate gentleness—I mustn’t say gentility, the word has 
lost its savour—shone through. 

His dignity in the Challenge Scene goes without saying 
and coming immediately after the perfect performances of 
Fernandez (whom I never saw to greater advantage than as 
Leonato) Henry Howe—Daddy Howe was then over eighty, 
I believe—Forbes-Robertson (the only possible Claudio) 
and Terriss (better even than Fred Terry as Don Pedro, 
and I can think of no higher praise) in that wonderful scene 
that mingles laughter and tears in such perfect proportion, 
was the surest test of his masterful, yet never arrogant, 
domination of any scene in which he appeared. 

I wonder if you know the story of Robert Macaire. Brief¬ 
ly VAuberge des Adrets is a drama of rather extravagant 
action and not too well written by MM. Benjamin, Saint 
Amand and Paulyanthe. It was produced at the Ambigu- 
Comique in 1823. Macaire the villain, an escaped gaol¬ 
bird, was cast to Frederic Lemaitre and Lemaitre was in 
despair about it. It was the first part he created at this 
theatre and he saw no chance in it to score in any sense. 
A thought struck him and he plotted with Firmin, who was 
rehearsing Bertrand (Jacques Strop) Macaire’s accomplice 
in crime, and together they evolved a pair of Originals 
whom on the first night they sprang on the astonished 
authors, management and audience. Both appeared in 
tattered clothing : Bertrand in an overcoat with trailing 
skirts and carrying an impossible umbrella ; while Macaire 
wore a black patch over one eye, a very bad hat and carried 
a wooden snuff-box which he caused to creak and squeak 
as a signal whenever his companion went too far in his 


302 


LETTER NUMBER FIFTY-ONE 


ridiculous excesses. The performance was a sensational 
success, much to the delight of MM. Benjamin and Saint- 
Amand and the chagrin of M. le Docteur Paulyanthe, who 
considered the mutilation of his work a sacrilege. 

In due course the play was translated into English and 
was played here, notably by Charles Fechter as Robert 
Macaire. It passed into the repertory of stock plays and 
has been acted by most of the Stars. Irving played it at 
the St. James’ (1867) and revived it at the Lyceum in 1888. 

For this revival he engaged Weedon Grossmith to play 
Jacques Strop whose claim to fame was established by 
taking part with his brother, George Grossmith—celebrated 
for his association with the Gilbert and Sullivan Operas— 
in a comic duologue, based on the humorous aspect of 
dental extraction, at several Special and Benefit matinte 
performances. 

When the curtain fell on the first night Irving was obliged 
to apologise for the new Jacques Strop whose performance 
had aroused the critical Pit to audible resentment. 

Later Weedon Grossmith developed a technique which 
enabled him to exploit his idiosyncrasies and having several 
parts written to his personality by Pinero and others he 
was accepted by the public and enjoyed many notable 
successes. 

Robert Macaire (as the English play is called) is poor 
drama, but the two characters in able hands are compensa¬ 
tion. Irving’s grim, and on occasion, tragic humour fas¬ 
cinated. I suspect he never indulged in the extravagance 
that Lemaitre allowed himself. Fechter no doubt treated 
it more lightly, yet Irving would be more grotesque while 
never permitting us to lose sight of the conscienceless 
villain beneath the weirdly garbed exterior. 


303 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


Irving played Jingle at the Lyceum before his great success 
in The Bells. I did not see this—nor his Bob Gassitt in 
Dearer than Life at the Queen’s in 1868. Both of these 
were kinsmen of Macaire, even to the spice of villainy, and 
both enhanced his— at that time—growing reputation. 

He would have been ideal as Dick Swiveller. 

Doricourt in The Belle's Stratagem which he played at 
the St. James’ 1866, his first part in London, was another 
fine comedy performance, his mock Mad Scene gaining 
him great credit. He revived this play at the Lyceum with 
Ellen Terry as Letitia Hardy. 

I saw him play Jeremy Diddler in James Kenney’s Raising 
the Wind and a more joyous piece of irresponsible comedy 
I never witnessed—having missed Charles Mathews. 

I emphasize Irving’s powers as a Comedian because you 
may have heard them questioned—even sneered at—but 
no one could have excelled as he did as Hamlet, Richard 
the Third, Iago, Louis the Eleventh and Richelieu who 
lacked the sense of humour and the ability so fully com¬ 
manded to express its varying shades. 

The grim touches of humour in Dubose were a potent 
factor of his triumphant success in the dual roles of The 
Lyons Mail. But what served him here most happily 
was his faculty of arresting attention suddenly by what 
I may call the Menacing Comment. Its effect was like 
the sudden shooting of an iron bolt. 

I have known only one other actor who possessed this 
technical quality in anything like equal degree ; Charles 
Hudson, and because of it Hudson was accused of copying 
Irving. It was not so. It is no easy thing to copy another 
actor. Imagine it: to study and rehearse a new part and 
keep in mind all the time how that other who has never played 


304 


LETTER NUMBER FIFTY-ONE 


it might play it and superimpose all his idiosyncrasies 
upon one’s own conception. Women have done it, I 
believe ; Lena Ashwell in her early days, it was said, had 
many copiers, but I have never known it successful—even 
commercially. 

Irving employed his Menacing Comment with terrific 
effect as Mephistopheles. I suspect his performance far 
outshone Charles Kean’s and Wills’ drama of Faust was, 
I am sure, as superior to that used by Kean as it was to 
Tree’s—and so was his production. 

But if I talk of Irving’s productions I shall never finish. 

Imagine then, the Menacing Comment, the humour and 
that spiritual sense inverted, if I may say so, so that he 
radiated malignity in place of beneficence and you have a 
crude idea of Irving’s Mephistopheles. 

I did not see him play Digby Grant at the Vaudeville, 
but I know Two Roses well—played in it in my early days 
—and I know, though it is actor-proof, that no one could 
obtain the maximum of effect in it unless he modelled his 
performance upon Irving’s. 

Before this, in 1869 at the Gaiety, he had made a great 
hit as Mr. Reginald Chevenix in Uncle Dick's Darling, such a 
type as Dickens loved to create and modelled by H. J. Byron 
in somewhat the same mould as Mr. Dombey. Irving’s 
performance of it stamped him as the man for Digby 
Grant and Digby Grant foreshadowed his approaching 
greatness. 

I started with the Swashbucklers : what a Mercutio Irving 
must have been ! but London never saw him in the part. 
He played Petruchio in Garrick’s perversion of The Taming 
of the Shrew at the Queen’s in 1867. This play, which he 
named Catherine and Petruchio, Garrick included in the list 


805 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


of his Dramatic Works. He did well; Shakespeare would 
have disowned it. Yet in one of his Prefaces Garrick wrote 
—speaking of his amended versions of Shakespeare— 

“ ’Tis my chief wish, my joy, my only plan 
“ To lose no drop of that immortal man.” 

This needs no comment. 

In the revival at the Queen’s, now called Katharine and 
Petruchio , Irving first acted with Ellen Terry who was then 
the Katharine—at that time very bored with the Theatre 
and everything concerning it, as she tells us in her 
Reminiscences. 

After Digby Grant Irving’s future was assured. He 
went to the Lyceum of which he became the Manager in 
1878 and there inaugurated the most artistic and prosperous 
Temple of Dramatic Art the English Theatre has ever known. 

In 1902 he was required by the London County Council to 
spend £10,000 on alterations and repairs to the building. 
At that time such outlay was impracticable. There were 
many reasons against compliance with such an exorbitant 
demand and so the Shrine was reduced to rubble and on 
its site arose the gaudy show-box that stands to-day. The 
spirit of Irving no longer haunts it. 

It is of ironic interest to note that about the same time 
the L.C.C. granted the sum of £10,000 towards the cost of 
rebuilding the Gaiety Theatre, which until that time had 
stood facing the Lyceum on the opposite corner of Wellington 
Street. 

O tempora ! O mores ! 

Yet that does not express my thought. 

O degenerate age ! O pharisaical mentors who assassinate 
Thalia while subsidising Phryne ! 


306 


LETTER LII 


London 

10th February , 1920. 

Well, Redgie, at last I have seen Chris play her first 
important leading part and I thank Heaven for both 
our sakes that it is an experience that can never occur 
again. 

The poor child was ditherish with nerves because I was 
there and I suffered nearly as badly as she knowing that 
I could not deceive myself if she should fail to satisfy me. 
The result, as you may suppose, was not entirely satisfactory. 
That she did all that was possible I can’t pretend but at 
least I can say that she made no grave mistake. Her comedy 
I found quite dainty but lacking in breadth, this may in 
some measure be set down to nerves but not entirely ; 
more experience—more self-confidence will ripen her style. 
Her pathos rings true but she is inclined to the worst fault, 
self-pity. How I have dinned it into her to avoid that. 
It is the “ smiling grief ” that most touches hearts. As to 
technique, she took her hurdles and ditches well—that is 
to say she cleared them all, not always with a perfect seat 
and without effort but she neither faltered nor slipped. 
On the whole I was pleased as relieved. I was very glad 
to be able to write her a sincerely encouraging letter when 
I got home. 

I understand why her manager can’t find a good juvenile 
man to act with her. She is terribly handicapped by the 
man she has to play with. The truth is that the part is so 
poor that if he found an actor good enough for it it wouldn’t 
be good enough for the actor, who could easily get twice 
what the part is worth for playing a better one. 

Before she left Chris and I saw In the Night at the Kings- 


307 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


way. It will run, I think, unless its disregard of moral 
conventions shocks the public. It is astonishing how con¬ 
ventionally respectable the average citizen becomes when 
he visits a theatre ; he appears to have left his normal 
code of conduct at home. In the Night is a strong play, 
simple and well constructed, though not too well written. 
The scene is Paris. It sounds like an adaptation from the 
French, in fact I believe it is. It is well played. Alfred 
Drayton is admirable as the Juge (Tinstruction, marred only 
by a cockney accent which is the more noticeable for his 
Gallic beard. Reginald Owen is quite agreeable as the 
lover. Jessie Winter is her usual, lazy self, conveying the 
idea that the proceedings interest her but slightly, but 
many, I know, find this attitude charming. Clayton 
Greene is invaluable as a Gendarme ; and Leslie Faber has 
one of the most wonderful parts ever written. I don’t wish 
to detract from his cleverness, indeed he gives an excellent 
and consistent study, but imagine a character in which either 
Arthur Whitby, Ainley, C. W. Somerset or George Elton would 
be equally effective. It is so simple, the lines and situations 
so perfectly devised that either of those could do it with a 
minimum of effort and the maximum of effect. In a word ; 
actor-proof. 

And even yet I don’t think you know what I mean by 
that, in spite of my endeavours to explain. I certainly 
do not mean fool-proof, novice-proof, or that the part does 
not need an actor to play it. I mean one so well constructed 
and written that even an indifferent actor can hardly spoil 
it but which gives a really good one chances to exploit all 
he knows and without strenuous effort add the effect of his 
personality and his art to what is already effective even 
without such aids ; so that his credit will be—not unde- 


308 


LETTER NUMBER FIFTY-TWO 


served, but far more than he deserves, for the Author has 
already done the major part of the work. 

I didn’t mean that Hamlet was an easy part, but it’s a 
hard one to kill. 

The Intruder in In the Night is easier still, for almost 
any method would suit it. 

Old Colley Cibber said : “ Anything naturally written 
ought to be in everyone’s way that pretends to be an 
actor.” 

He would have to revise his judgment if he were with 
us to-day or he would find himself most unpopular. 

But even bad actors—who are actors—may do some things 
irreproachably that their peculiar method happens to fit; 
as the pianist who is more adroit at octaves than trills or 
finds the staccato touch easier than the sostenuto. 

Also many an alleged genius robbed of his flamboyant 
eccentricity is revealed as a poseur and a fraud. 

On Sunday I went to one of those theatrical Dinners at 
which everyone talks for publication and more insincerity 
is expressed even than in the Stage Gossip columns of our 
periodicals. My host landed me with the worst bottle 
of Burgundy (alleged Volny) it has been my lot to gustate 
for many years. Don’t look for “ gustate ” in the dictionary. 
It was not his fault; though an excellent soul he takes a 
white-eye-lashed view of life, being by inclination a vegetarian 
and by necessity a Pussyfoot. 

No, I wrong him ; not that, for he is temperate. Pussy¬ 
foot is like Macaulay’s Puritans who objected to Bear- 
baiting, not because of the pain inflicted on the bear but 
because of the pleasure enjoyed by the spectators. 

Poor Z absorbs gaseous minerals by disinclination. 

They say Rockefeller would give a few of his millions 


309 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


for a digestion. Z hasn’t the millions but he has a better 
heart and a worse digestion than Rockefeller. 

I wonder if you know this yarn about Rockefeller : 
Arrived at a small town in the early morning he asked for 
eggs and was charged a dollar a-piece for them. He 
remarked : “ Seems like hens must be rare fowls in this 
ville.” “ No, sir,” was the reply, “ but millionaires aire.” 

But I was at dinner drinking vile Burgundy. The com¬ 
pensation was one of the most brilliantly witty speeches 
I have ever heard, even from McDonald Rendle. I am 
sure my headache next morning was due to excess of laughter. 

What did you say ? 

Certainly not. Besides I didn’t finish the second bottle 
—and I never touch liqueurs. 

By the way, dear old R-was there, resplendent in 

white silk flowered waistcoat with gilt buttons ; but I 
/ wish he hadn’t worn a black tie. 

I hope you enjoyed your motor trip. The weather was 
perfect, just as May ought to be and generally isn’t. I 
was some time in the garden doing jobs I detest but the air 
was wonderful. 

Tell Marie that flirting that does not deceive is savourless : 
if it does it is too cruel to be called amusement. 

Who cares for a flirt ? Reliability is the anchor of Love. 

Miss L-’s hair was charming and the stray lock 

appeared as a pretty accident. Last time I saw her it had 
become an arranged effect—a deliberate affectation, 
neither pretty nor becoming. But she is a maiden of incur¬ 
able respectability. 

As for you, my dear Redgie, you are a born spendthrift 
—Yet, no ; that is not the right word, Scattergift is your 
name. 


310 



LETTER NUMBER FIFTY-TWO 


What the Frenchman said was quite ridiculous and extra¬ 
vagant, mere Gallic politeness, which one takes with the 
grain of salt—as it is meant to be taken. Compliments 
always make me long to deserve them. 

Your conclusion is irrefutable : the Artist is never satisfied. 
The moment self-satisfaction sets in Art decays. Put 
it to Instinct if you don’t care to pay yourself the compli¬ 
ment of giving it to Reason. 

As for your Essay ; take the praise and use it as a spur to 
fresh endeavour. You are in no danger of falling into 
conceit. You have done well and you are proud with that 
thankful humility that is an essential quality of a dignified 
and selfless pride, recognising the spiritual essence above 
and beyond mere individual control that makes it a great 
and worthy emotion. To rejoice in it with confidence is 
not coriceit. 

It is good to pay for benefits : it gives a sense of having 
deserved them. If our conduct towards others were in¬ 
fluenced always by their conduct towards us we might have 
reason often to be heartily ashamed. 

Still I have no work and I sit twiddling my almost worn- 
out thumbs. It seems useless, yet one must strive for 
employment; though I have noticed that in our business 
when the job does come it usually presents itself accidentally 
while one is strenuously hunting in a totally different direc¬ 
tion. I have faith that something will turn up and intelli¬ 
gent faith never slacks endeavour. 

Independence in thought and action is man’s crowning 
inheritance. I shall continue in my own old way, for cer¬ 
tainly if my work is not wanted, pretending that it is other 
than it is won’t create a demand. 

One grows so used to the pain of disappointment that the 


311 


x 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


joy of realisation is unbelievable. Yesterday is no longer 
possible, to-morrow futile. 

Forgive me, I am squealing. 

Some think the world a failure because Misery squeals. 
They forget that Happiness purrs almost inaudibly. The 
world is wonderful and beautiful. I hate the thought of 
leaving it. 

Yours autumnally, 


312 


LETTER LIU 


London 

19 tli February , 1920. 

“ Easy as falling off a log,” you say, Redgie ; and that’s 
very easy isn’t it ? You just—fall! 

Quite so. It’s no more difficult than that. 

But wait a moment. Have you ever tried it with the 
knowledge that at a given moment you must let go ? Is 
it so easy ? 

There are a dozen ways of doing it—a hundred. 

What effect is to be produced ? Is the tragedy of the 
accident to be accentuated ?—or the humour ? Is it to 
be a slide—a bump—a topple—a slip—or a crash ? 

What is the best mechanism to employ in order to produce 
the maximum of effect consonant with an appearance of 
perfect naturalness ? Wait a moment and take thought. If 
it be really a natural accident the chances are about fifty 
to one against it seeming so. Yet that one-in-fifty chance 
may come off and you will get a huge lump of undeserved 
credit as being a great artist—though there will be diversity 
of opinion as to what really is effective—and even as to 
whether effect should be aimed at. 

Further the question arises as to the capability of the 
judge—for all his didacticism—to decide justly, and whether— 
having regard to his qualities as an artist—his meed of praise 
or blame is worth consideration. 

Again : the feat may be mere child’s play to you—to 
another it may require great effort of concentrated will 
power and a full equipment of technical skill. The qualified 
judge will sense all that. 

But even yet we haven’t got at the root of the matter ; 
there are a dozen other things to be considered: the height of 


313 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


the log—the angle from which it is observed—the perspective 
in which it stands—the w ay it is lit and the sort of back¬ 
ground it projects from ; all this will, unconsciously, influence 
the judge’s verdict on You. 

He will remark callously : “ Well—or ill done ! ” and that’s 
all. He won’t trouble to say how or why success or failure 
was achieved. Console yourself; in most cases he does not 
know’. 

But who would be at the mercy of such, not only for bread 
and butter, but for that appreciation which is the artist’s 
breath of life ? 

Is it not amazing that any can still be found—not only 
willing, but anxious—to fall off logs ? 

It is true that among the hundreds eager to attempt it 
because it is an easy way, they think, to earn a living, few 
are willing to discover the best w r ay, since any w ay will do ; 
and as there is no standard the situation is distinctly 
deplorable. 

We all love applause, but some few of us are critical of 
its quality. We want it for what w r e know r is good and 
despise it as the rew’ard of mere claptrap. We know we 
can win it by tricks (and some tricks deserve it) but it is 
not the tricks themselves but the w r ay in w^hich they are 
performed that should be the object of censure or applause. 

The applause that discriminates—that rewards subtle 
preparation and skilfully applied technique—is the artist’s 
most valued compliment. The burst of passion that seems 
real, the joyous note of comedy that rings true, the hysteria 
that is convincingly natural; these are part of the equipment 
of the great actor. 

Some modern critics will tell you that reserved—un¬ 
expressed emotion is the only genuine art. It is not true. 


314 


LETTER NUMBER FIFTY THREE 


The great artist can command that also ; it is a necessary 
corollary ; but the modern Reserved Force actor not only 
does not, but cannot —could not even though the scene re¬ 
quired it—give us the outburst that on occasion the inspired 
author’s text might demand. 

I have written to you how Irving emploj^ed the three 
methods of using his personality-—of adapting it—and of 
subduing it. Inevitably it showed through ; but though all 
his impersonations bore some resemblance to Irving, his 
Charles the First (for example) was unrecognisable in his Louis 
the Eleventh ; his Becket showed no trace of his Benedick. 

But there is, as I also told you, a fourth method ; that 
of exploiting personality, and that is the one that the modern 
reserved force actors adopt and rely upon solely. I could 
give you the names of a whole string who do this and nothing 
else —the difficulty would be to name a few who do not. 

Who sits on the edge of a table and lights a cigarette with 
such convincing naturalness as Gerald du Maurier ? Never, 
I suppose, has any actor achieved this graceful negligence 
with less strain or more consummate art. His sang jroid is 
perfect; his diction clear, concise, effortless; his gesture 
apt, easy and illuminative; all is so characteristically him¬ 
self that any deviation from its distinctive Du Mauriesquerie 
would be resented by his million admirers, amongst whom 
I humbly count myself. 

But attend: the villain in The Ware Case was excellent, 
and “ excellent ” is a very big word ; so is the performance 
in Dear Brutus , both are as thoroughly Du Maurier as 
Henry Beauclerc in Diplomacy. Unhappily, although Mr. 
Dearth might very well be Du Maurier—Barrie probably 
knew' he would be and so designed him—Hemy Beauclerc 
is quite a different person. As Algy Fairfax this particular 


815 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


manner would have been quite convincing but as character¬ 
istic of Henry Beauclerc, who is, to all intents and purposes, 
representative of the British Empire in Paris, it was quite 
the contrary. 

Briefly the actor’s problem used to be How to fit his 
Personality to the Part; to-day it is How to fit the Part to 
his Personality—and very often he doesn’t attempt even that, 
but just strolls through it haphazard. 

And why should he not ? 

It is far easier. Nobody raises the faintest objection. 
Critics expect it—even approve it. And the Public knows 
no better. 

Unfortunately it doesn’t happen to be Art—at least, not 
the Art of Acting. 

You saw Ainley in The Great Adventure —No, it was before 
your theatre-going days. Well, you missed a very fine 
piece of impersonation. He adapted his personality, 
characterised, and gave us a finished study ; recognisably 
Ainley, but quite convincingly Ham Carve. 

But who got the bulk of appreciation and credit ? Wish 
Wynne, who, having a part perfectly composed and written, 
entirely sympathetic, was chosen because all she would need 
to do was to step upon the stage and be herself, which she 
did to admiration. 

From the point of view of acting—that is to say of imper¬ 
sonation—there was no comparison between the two achieve¬ 
ments. They were not on the same plane. To judge 
them together and say they were equally convincing is to 
hand an enormous bouquet to Ainley. He was acting and 
producing the effect of nature while Miss Wynne was nature. 
She was applauded for being simply and solely what she 
couldn’t help being—what God had made her. 


316 


LETTER NUMBER FIFTY-THREE 


And if, as some critics did, you judge them together to 
Ainley’s disadvantage it is like going to the snake-house 
at the Zoo and giving the python a round of applause, 
while bestowing but grudging recognition on Michel Angelo 
for The Laocoon ; or cheering the sun for setting over Hamp¬ 
stead Heath and reluctantly approving Turner for Dido 
building Carthage. 

Things that are on different planes can never meet and 
the Art of Acting cannot be compared with this new—well. 
Art, if you will, of Self-Exploitation, created by Pinero 
(whom I regard as the Judas of our Art, for he betrayed it 
by the kiss of Tanqueray) and fostered by Shaw, Barker, 
Galsworthy and their followers and imitators. 

I have not the faintest intention by my references to 
pythons and Hampstead Heath to disparage Miss Wynne, 
for whose art, in her metier , I have the greatest admiration. 
Nor would I draw a parallel between Michel Angelo and 
Turner on the one hand and Henry Ainley on the other. 
Those great Artists were never content to rest on their 
laurels as Ainley has done, for since The Great Adventure 
he appears not to have troubled overmuch to impersonate. 
Ilam Carve was his top-notch. True, he gave us an 
adaptation of it in Quinney's. It was effective, and no 
doubt far less trouble than starting right at the beginning 
to study Joe Quinney from the inside. But Ainley can 
act, and I wish to Heaven he had not made so much money 
that he can now afford to act or not as it may please him. 


317 


LETTER LIV 


London 

1$/ March , 1920. 

I was at the first night of the revival of The Admirable 
Crichton at the Royalty Theatre a month ago. 

Is it a fact that first impressions engrave themselves 
so indelibly upon the mind that it becomes incapable of 
receiving clearly the stamp of more mature judgment ? 
and that, as consequence, the later images appear by 
comparison vapid and crude ? 

This comedy is one of the cleverest examples of sheer 
play-making I know ; the technical skill that Barrie dis¬ 
plays in its construction is extraordinary. Indeed so well 
is it made that the fact is not noticeable, but read it, or— 
better still—watch it in rehearsal and you will see. 

The critics who abuse Sardou, who learnt his art from 
Scribe, would resent with bitterness the charge that Barrie 
had learned anything from either of those dramatists and 
would scout with scorn the scurrilous imputation (as they 
would regard it) that The Admirable Crichton is a well-nigh 
perfect example of the type they execrate—yet so it is. 
It is also many other things but that first. 

You, however, are more interested in the acting and I 
am interested in that chiefly—and in this play especially— 
because the well-made play usually affords it the most 
striking opportunities. 

One has few chances of comparing performances of the 
same part by different actors outside of the Classics. In 
public print it shows very bad manners to make such 
comparisons but I am no publicist. 

I have seen performances that I have preferred to the 


818 


LETTER NUMBER FIFTY-FOUR 


originals, but I admit that as good is not good enough to 
seem so, and better must be, in fact, very much better. 

I have given you my opinion of H. B. Irving’s acting 
generally, but there is no denying that as Crichton he was 
fitted as with a glove. 

The part asked no more than he could give with ease ; 
moreover it afforded him scope to offer his all with equal 
ease. 

But this revival : Alfred Bishop, admirable actor as he 
is, was not happy as the Earl of Loam. But who could 
expect to efface recollection of Kemble in any character 
that he had made peculiarly his own. I wish you could 
have seen Bishop as Captain Cruickshanks in Rosemary . 
Kemble would have been at the same disadvantage there 
by comparison with Bishop. 

John Astley’s performance could not be compared with 
Du Maurier’s perfect exposition of the Honorable Ernest’s— 
and his own—idiosyncrasies. 

But Dennis Eadie as Crichton ? 

Eadie is a clever actor. So long as he confined himself 
to playing middle-aged bourgeois he was brilliant. He created 
a genre. Again and again he gave us remarkable studies ; 
in Strife , in Irene Wycherley , in Diana oj Dobson's and 
many others I forget for the moment; why did he give 
it up ? 

No doubt the answer could be found in his bank-book. 

He does not shine as a straight actor. I remember him 
in Sally Bishop —but that is beside the point. Yet I am 
sure I am not wrong in saying he should never have attempted 
Crichton. 

And I wish Barrie had left “ excellent well ” alone and 
not altered the end of the play. I can picture H. B. now 


819 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


most clearly in the final episode. I had seen him previously 
to great advantage in The Tree of Knowledge at the St. 
James’ but never was he so well suited as in The Admirable 
Crichton. 

It was natural, I suppose, that he should take up his 
father’s parts, especially Mathias. He had everything to 
help him technically and innumerable opportunities of 
studying his father’s performance : the trouble was that he 
tried to reproduce his father—without the spirit! 

I did not see The Bells in 1871 and had I done so I should 
not have been very capable of judging it; but when I did 
see it I knew it was no longer what it had been. I believe 
Irving was told that if he continued to act the part for all 
he and it were worth the strain would kill him. 

Naturally. As I have said before, no artist can go on 
repeating himself without grave danger to his art. In the 
numerous revivals Irving played on technique, though pro¬ 
bably two or three times in each run he would excel former 
record -and the next night fall well below it. 

My friend Herbert Jarman, artist, actor, producer for 
Waller and others (he produced Cyrano for Loraine), Egypto¬ 
logist and, during the War, aerial ehronologist—I don’t 
quite understand what his duties were but I know they were 
individual and special —told me that he had seen Irving 
as Mathias fourteen times and only once did he act it. 

Similarly Jarman saw The Lyons Mail twenty-three 
times ; we saw it together more than once. He said though 
Irving never failed to give full value in his beautiful perform¬ 
ance of Lesurques, he was at the top of his form as Dubose 
only four times. Yet that is a pretty good average when 
one considers the tremendous physical tension of such 
an impersonation. 


820 


LETTER NUMBER FIFTY-FOUR 


Irving was obliged, for commercial reasons, to give 
matinees ; at first his Company played only the matinee on 
Saturdays—for which he paid them a full extra salary— 
and he closed the theatre at night. The actors, you see, 
thus drew a salary and a sixth for the six performances. 

I wonder what our present commercial managers would 
say to that! 

Irving abolished Fines in the theatre—before his regime 
regulations were very strict and fines rigidly enforced for 
breaches of them—with the result that he earned a better 
loyalty, more punctuality and precision in business than 
any of his predecessors. 

Actors in the bulk are queer folk—or were—more respon¬ 
sive and impulsively generous than the members of most 
callings. 

How Irving managed to play Louis the Eleventh as I 
have seen him again and again, always “ all out,” I can’t 
imagine. The scenes with Coitier and Nemours were amazing 
physical efforts yet I never knew him fail to rise to them. 

As I think I told you Charles Kean was probably nearer 
to historical truth in his picture of the wily Valois, but 
Irving’s artistic truth was so convincing that you would have 
said had you seen him that so Louis must have been : and 
if he wasn’t—well, it was incredible that a lesser man should 
have so well and truly laid the foundations of what France 
was to become. 

Again with Richelieu : historical research—edited by 
historians—state documents—interpreted in the light of 
what it has seemed diplomatic to record, ignoring much 
it was no doubt wisest to suppress—and alleged, though in 
some cases but half-authenticated fact have constructed for 
us a figure which it seems hardly credible to suppose could 


321 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


have carried to successful issue the work of Henri Quatre 
and Sully and paved the splendid way to France’s future 
as the great Cardinal did. 

The figure drawn by Bulwer Lytton that Maeready created 
—in the sense that he acted it first—and into which Irving 
breathed a soul, with his ecstatic love of Country might have 
accomplished it. 

Love is a greater force than mere scheming, cruelty, or 
tyranny. 

That the events of the Day of Dupes should have been 
bound up with the fate of persons so insignificant as Julie 
de Mortemar and the Chevalier de Mauprat is, on the face 
of it, ridiculous. Yet the artistic truth of the dramatic 
situation when 'properly acted is more convincing than John 
Drinkwater’s verbatim report of what Abraham Lincoln 
said at certain meetings of his cabinet in regard to the ques¬ 
tion of Black Slavery in the South. That was about as 
true as the “ Chinese Slavery ” catch-phrase in regard to 
South Africa—an excuse, though a brilliantly clever one, 
to enlist humanitarianism for a Cause that was purely 
political. 

But Richelieu : Maeready ringing the changes on his fate- 
sealed Werner manner, his romantique Claude Melnotte 
attitude and the ponderous humour of his Benedick, scored 
heavily in what was at that time an entirely new type of 
play. 

The spiritual beauty of Irving’s rapt devotion—that 
austerity proper to the priest, though no doubt lacking in 
this militant churchman, who was also so very markedly 
chevalier des dames —was no doubt at variance with ascer¬ 
tained fact, yet the whole effect of his picture of the warrior- 
statesman Cardinal-Duke was, I submit, nearer to Truth than 


322 


LETTER NUMBER FIFTY-FOUR 


such biographical analyses as dwell mainly on the petty 
human weaknesses of one whose gigantic intellectual stature 
so potently influenced world history. 

Edwin Booth’s Richelieu was no doubt kindred to 
Macready’s. I am not likely to forget— impressive as he 
was—how he “ sawed the air not “ thus,” but with 
fingers crooked at right-angles to the palm in a progressive 
zig-zagging movement upwards to illustrate the lines 
“While civilization on its luminous wings 
“Soars phoenix-like to Jove.” 

It made me think, as it has always done since, of the 
advertisement of the Phoenix Fire Insurance Company with 
the apochryphal bird perkily perched on the streaks of 
forked lightning. 

But Booth’s acting and his association with Irving when 
they alternated the parts of Othello and Iago is another 
and rather large subject. 

I saw Irving neither in Eugene Aram , Vanderdecken nor 
as Philip of Spain in Tennyson’s Queen Mary , renamed 
Philip. How wonderful he might have been as Philip the 
Second in a dramatic version of Marion Crawford’s In the 
Palace of the King. 

His Eugene Aram it is possible to reconstruct from a 
knowledge of Lytton’s novel and Irving’s performances 
of Mathias and Edgar of Ravenswood. I can picture it 
and I grieve that I missed it. 

Vanderdecken. One knows the legend and Captain 
Marryat’s grisly tale. I imagine Irving as the phantom 
ship-master—a mystic, nautical Hamlet. In such eerie 
creations he was inimitable—unapproachable. 

Irving’s performance of Macbeth gave rise to much 
controversy. It was inevitable. Hitherto Macbeth had 


32a 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


been played always and only on the most robust lines. 
Elderly critics could accept no other view of the character. 
Taking into account the times, not only when the play was 
written but the period in which it is set the Viking type 
would seem the only possible. And yet—? No doubt 
there were such—must have been—and yet—and yet—it 
is not quite convincing. 

Irving made a good case for his new reading. I did 
not see it until his revival in 1888 when Ellen Terry played 
Lady Macbeth. I was disappointed. The detail is 
blurred in my memory. I can tell you nothing that you 
cannot read of in one or other of the biographies. 

His Shylock is more vivid in my recollection. Irving 
followed the Kean tradition. I can’t accept it as the true 
one but that is mere individual opinion. I believe Irving 
invented the silent return of Shylock to his empty house 
after the flight of Jessica. It was worthy of him—a stroke 
of genius. 

There was no snatching of his gaberdine from the clutch 
of Gratiano—as Kean had it—in the Trial Scene ; his dignity 
was superb. He was patriarchal; and if he had not the 
organ-peal of Genesis in his voice, he had at least the impres¬ 
sive ardour and compelling earnestness of St. Paul. 

If I have been so fortunate as to create for you any sort 
of mental picture of Irving you will know that his work 
excelled in two opposite qualities : it exuded a sweet aroma 
of goodness—an incense of chastity, I may almost say—on 
occasion and, at will, he could create by it an aura of 
wickedness which was at its most malignant when spiced 
with humour. 

To illustrate these qualities in the man himself I will 
tell you an anecdote : Irving was, of course, pestered for 


324 


LETTER NUMBER FIFTY-FOUR 


engagements in his Company by every tag-rag actor with 
whom he had chanced to rub shoulders in his ’prentice 
days. One day came one to him begging for work on the 
plea that at one time they had shared a bed in humble 
lodgings. Irving referred him to Loveday, his stage- 
manager, and the old actor found himself in receipt 
of six pounds a week, no mean salary in the Eighties. 

Production followed production but never was his name 
in the cast. Weary of his sinecure, he took to waylaying 
Irving whenever a new play or revival was announced and 
asked to be allowed to earn his salary. Each time Irving 
answered : “ Ha ! We must consult the author.” 

At last a revival of Hamlet was imminent and again Irving 
was waylaid and arrested stepping into his hansom at the 
stage-door :— 

“ Is there no part for me in Hamlet , sir ? ” 

“ Ha ! We must consult the author.” 

“ But, sir— Hamlet —Shakespeare-- the author’s dead.” 

“ Ha ! Well—we must respect his memory ! ” 

Yours as ever, 




325 


LETTER LV 


London 

14 th March , 1920. 

When Shakespeare wrote Julius Caesar he drew the 
character of “ the mightiest Julius ” as a blatant fool 
and this he did of definite and set purpose. His aims were 
to magnify Brutus and to develop to the full his masterly 
conception of Marc Antony. He did not scruple to avail 
himself of the poet-playwright’s privilege which allows that 
so long as he does not contradict his thesis within the 
limits of his work he may premise exactly as it may please 
him. That is the dramatist’s licence. 

Yet when W. G. Wills, for a similar purpose, presented 
Oliver Cromwell as “ a mouthing patriot with an itching 
palm ” never was heard such clamorous cawing in the 
critical rookery. 

If Wills be condemned Shakespeare must not go scathless ; 
and, to say truth, there are those who condemn Shakespeare 
with equal vigour, though they do not pause to reflect how 
the whole fabric of the structure would warp and sag by 
alteration in the chiselling of the corner-stone. 

In Charles the First Wills designed to obtain from his 
audience a maximum of sympathy for the Stuart Martyr and 
with the collaboration of his great protagonist he secured it. 

The play is no great literary work ; the poetry was supplied 
more by the actor’s temperament than by the poet’s phrase, 
yet there are in it moments of great beauty. 

Whoever heard the King’s apostrophe to Moray as 
delivered by Irving. 

“I saw a picture once by a great Master—” 

“ Judas had eyes like thine of liquid blue.—*’ 


326 



LETTER NUMBER FIFTY-FIVE 


Whoever, I say, could listen to this speech unmoved- 
well, he was “ fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils.” 

The majesty of “ Uncover in the presence of your King ! ” 
to Cromwell was transcendent. The velvet of humorous 
tolerance shrouding the steely sarcasm of “ Who is this rude 
gentleman ? ” as Ireton’s presence, ignored till that moment 
in spite of his repeated interruptions, was at length recognised 
was inimitable. 

Of the final leave-taking of the Queen it is not possible 
to speak. The curtain fell in silence and the audience 
would sit gasping — sobbing. A minute would pass that 
seemed like five, and then the thunder ! 

Yet so it was throughout the evening, the “ lump in the 
throat ” was never more difficult of ingurgitation. 

Akin to this noble and beautiful performance was Irving’s 
creation of Doctor Primrose. I say creation deliberately. 
The play was not new. Hermann Vezin had already acted 
the part at the Court Theatre. The character, moreover, 
as presented by Irving, had many points of difference from 
Goldsmith’s somewhat bucolic parson. Irving—I have 

used the word before— 46 etherealised ” it. The frail yet 
hearty old gentleman (oh, yes, essentially that) he pictured 
\ for us had a soul m any sizes too large for his body . 

Yet having said this of The Vicar of Wakefield , how shall 
I speak of Bechet ? 

St. Thomas k Becket massacred on the steps of the Shrine 
of Canterbury ! 

The picture is before me—misty. 

I see him at chess with King Henry—Terriss’ passionate 
King was a vivid picture of splendid virility—ascetic, 
thoughtful—power in repose ! I see him in mitre and 
cope with uplifted crozier, towering above a sea of heads, 


327 


Y 



LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


dominant, hedged by sanctity—power in expression ! I 
see him succumb under the assault of the Four Knights, 
fragile yet invulnerable, bleeding, fluttering as a stricken 
bird, dominant still—triumphant in death ! 

Wolsey, the worldly churchman, he lit with a spirit quite 
different. 

York House and he sits in lonely state, his chin on his 
hand, the muscles of his jaw throbbing in perceptible rhythm 
to the music, those wonderful Three Dances of Edward 
German, which were Irving’s favourite melodies. 

His chin on his hand ! Irving’s hands ! What a subject 
for a monograph ! 

In Henry the Eighth Terriss gave us a life-like portrait 
of Bluff Hal, as yet a tyro in matrimony. He did not make 
the mistake of presenting him as a gross old satyr as he has 
since been wrongly interpreted. 

I was so presumptuous as to find only disappointment in 
Irving’s production of King Arthur. He did not satisfy me as 
the King; temperamentally he would have been the ideal 
Launcelot. 

This is to detract nothing from Forbes-Robertson’s 
beautiful performance. I should have acknowledged grate¬ 
fully his perfect reading of Buckingham in Henry the 
Eighth. 

Ellen Terry was Guinevere and Lena Ashwell Elaine. 
Remembering her exquisite Fair Rosamund in Bechet I 
know—as I knew before I had seen that—that Ellen Terry 
would have better realised my imagining of Elaine. 

You see on this subject I am all perversity. I will leave 
it. 

In Punch there appeared a caricature of Irving with this 
quotation : “ Wherefore art thou Romeo ? ” 


328 


LETTER NUMBER FIFTY-FIVE 


This question Irving answered fully by his performance in 
Act V. Scene I. A street in Mantua. 

I think I have seen fourteen Romeos : I have known that 
scene acted only by one of them and that one was Irving. 
It is true that the expression of youthful ardour which the 
Balcony Scene requires presented difficulties which Irving’s 
physique accentuated. The flow of passionate utterance 
in that strain was foreign to his personality and only by 
great technical skill did he ultimately conquer the difficulties 
and reconcile the varying aspects and emotions of the char¬ 
acter into a convincing and satisfying whole. But his 
scenes with the Friar and with the Apothecary were always 
superlatively good. 

It was quite different in Ravenswood ; from the first the 
young laird was a performance as ideal in execution as in 
conception. 

Of Robert Landry in The Dead Heart I could tell you much 
and of Victorien Sardou’s plays, written especially for 
Irving and translated by his son Laurence, Robespierre 
and Dante , but I fear to repeat myself. 

Hamlet, Charles the First, Benedick, Becket, Louis the 
Eleventh and Lesurques and Dubose remain my 
favourites. 

Of these last two—the dual roles in The Lyons Mail —I 
have heard it objected that Irving made them too 
rfis-similar—that it was a strain on the credulity to 
imagine that the other characters could confuse the two 
identities. 

I do not admit this. If it were true it would constitute 
a grave artistic error. I conceive that Irving treated the 
problem with perfect skill yet it is a trap for the unwary 
actor. 


;j29 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


Do you know the true history of this cause celebre in which 
justice has only recently been done by rehabilitating 
the memory of the innocent Lesurques, guillotined in 
1792 ? 

So it is in the original French play, Le Courrier de Lyon 
by MM. Moreau, Siraudin et Delacour, though even during 
its first run in 1850 an alternative ending was provided, the 
audiences at the Theatre de la Gaiete objecting to the sacrifice 
of the innocent. The parts were played by that fine actor 
Lacressonniere who died comparatively recently and played 
Leads almost to the last. 

Lesurques was in fact a burly flaxen-haired Norman ; 
Dubose an under-sized swarthy Southern gaol-bird. After 
the robbery of the Mail-cart Dubose and his gang adjourned 
to an inn and Dubose put on a flaxen wig. A foolish kitchen- 
wench who had seen Dubose’s back only as he rode away, 
overawed by the gendarmes , swore away Lesurques’ life 
because his hair was the same colour as Dubose's wig . 

I still search for work. I have been asked to produce 
a one act Thriller for a Special Matinee and that is all the 
definite employment in sight. 

No more to-day, I look forward to your next. I shall 
spend the evening thinking of old Lyceum days. What an 
actor ! 44 When comes such another ? ” 

Yours, 

P.S. —I forgot to tell you of Fabien and Louis dei Franchi, 
The Corsican Brothers. It is no matter. Another time 
if you are interested. 

The spell of Great Acting sheds light in many curious 
senses : I think of Kean’s art as the blazing sunlight— 
startling—blinding— 


330 


LETTER NUMBER FIFTY-FIVE 


Irving’s as the radiance of the moon at full, illuminating 
as the sun at noon, clear-cut by shadows—well-defined— 
firmly etched— 

Sometimes glowing, burnished as the harvest-moon— 
lurid— 

Sometimes misty—suggestive—ringed by a watery nimbus 
—weird— 

Sometimes as star-light—pure, with a radiance, gentle 
and sanctified—Becket! 


331 


LETTER LVI 


London 

30th March , 1920. 

Did I read somewhere the other day that Carlyle was 
responsible for “ Genius is an infinite capacity for taking 
pains ? ” 

Surely not. It is so manifestly untrue. 

It was he I know who said : 14 Genius is unconscious of 
its excellence,” which is undeniable and a direct contradiction 
of the former. It is obviously impossible to “ take pains ” 
unconsciously. 

It is for the plodder, and even for the talented, to “ take 
pains,” but genius achieves by inspiration what the others 
never attain, no matter how laboriously they strive. 

There are those who say that there has never been and 
can never be Great Acting—that acting, being an interpretive 
not a creative art, can have no quality that may be called 
great. 

But is acting merely interpretive ? 

What about inspiration ? 

Is there—or rather has there never been inspired acting ? 
And may not inspired acting guided and controlled by techni¬ 
cal skill be called creation when it reveals heights and depths 
and a thousand facets of the mentality never suggested by 
mere work-a-day performance ? 

Hazlitt said “ it is we who are Hamlet.” 

And it is true that listening to mere recital of Shakespeare’s 
words may so turn our eyes inward that we perceive in our¬ 
self all the qualities exemplified in Shakespeare’s creation. 

Yet what of Irving’s Hamlet, which disguised nothing of 
all that—and revealed something more ? 

Is not that “ more ” a thing of the actor’s creation ? 


332 


LETTER NUMBER FIFTY-SIX 


You may reply that there could be no “ more ” that the 
poet had not designed—that since the actor was able to 
express it he must have found the germ in the poet’s work. 

Well, I will allow that in the case of Shakespeare ; but 
what of the work of lesser—that is to say, all the other dra¬ 
matists ? 

Again and again I have heard authors admit that per¬ 
formance showed depths and shades in their characters 
that they never dreamed were there. Have the actors, 
then, in those cases not created ? 

Compare Irving’s Doctor Primrose with Hermann Vezin’s 
—and Oliver Goldsmith’s. They vary to points of definite 
dissimilarity, yet all are vital. Is only the last creation ? 

What of The Fool's Revenge which Tom Taylor wrote 
for Phelps, based upon Victor Hugo’s Le Roi S'Amuse ? 
The points of difference between Bertuccio and Triboulet 
are so marked that they are indeed two separate characters 
—individual creations of individual poets. 

Now compare Edwin Booth’s and Hermann Vezin’s 
performances of Bertuccio. One at least must have totally 
misrepresented the author’s intention yet both were credible 
-—living suffering human beings, though as utterly unlike 
as Little Ticli and Mr. Asquith. 

It won’t do. The actor does create. The critic may 
not approve his creation and may therefore try to sneer it 
out of existence, but he can’t. It lives for those who see it. 

It is given to but few actors to create impressively— 
to originate so vitally that their work is worthy to be called 
creation but great actors achieve it. 

The jargon of the calling dubs mere first performance 
of a character “ 1 creation.” I allow it is too big a word, 
though it is not usually used in an arrogant sense. 


333 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


Acting is primarily an interpretive Art, but even so 
may it not be great ? 

If interpretive art cannot be great there was never a 
great violinist. Yet Paganini is generally allowed to have 
been great. 

Was he great when he performed his own compositions 
but less than great when he interpreted, with similar in¬ 
spiration, the works of other masters ? 

Is Paderewski a great pianist only when he plays his own 
works ?—or Kreisler ? 

Suppose Shakespeare had himself acted Othello and given 
an inspired performance would not that performance have 
been great ? 

Must we then deny the epithet to a similarly inspired 
performance by Burbage ? 

I submit that any man who excels in his particular 
craft or art may be called great; but I agree that the word 
is used too loosely and has lost much of its force and 
intention from too frequent and indiscreet usage. 

There has been a small number of great actors of one 
or a few parts ; there have been two or three genius-inter¬ 
preters in the history of the Stage. 

The Art of Acting is and always must be more important 
in the Theatre than the dramatist’s Art. For thirty years 
the dramatist—and producer—have swamped acting with 
most lamentable results, for to-day we search in vain for 
a single actor capable of giving what may be justly termed a 
great performance. 

We can only hope for a new era, when, conditions having 
changed, Impersonation may once again become the all- 
important interest of the Theatre—when cranks no longer 
select puppets to expose what they conceive to be the author’s 


334 


LETTER NUMBER FIFTY-SIX 


intentions or warp the obvious to their crankiness. The 
Theatre may then reassert itself and a great art regain proper 
esteem. 

The acting temperament is generated in the irresponsible, 
irregular, irrational bohemian strain that may be in us. 
Education ruins it by teaching it self-consciousness. The 
best actors are by no means the most intellectual. Mimicry 
is not an intellectual accomplishment but an instinct; 
and though mimicry of a soul may require a higher type of 
instinct than the guttersnipe’s mimicry of the Peeler on 
his beat it is only a development of the same art. 

Your Rachels, Terrys, Keans, Irvings, Lemaitres, 
Melingues are born ready-made actors and need only the 
polish of experience to expose in perfection the brilliant 
facets of their art. 

Of those—the only great ones I can recall, unless I include 
Burbage (for I put Talma, Coquelin, Booth, Bernhardt in 
a different category)—none sprang from particularly 
refined or intellectual surroundings. 

I have said Kean was the greatest Actor since the Restora¬ 
tion and so I believe, though he lacked the full equipment 
of the ideally great. This I take to consist of three elements : 
Tragic Force, Humanity, and Sense of Humour ; all these 
reconciled and inspired by an intuition so sensitive that it 
forestalls and directs the sentience of the mass before it— 
for remember, the actor never obtains his effect independently 
of his audience but always in co-operation with them so 
that he is forced to vary his method from night to night in 
order to appear to obtain the same result. 

By Tragic Force I mean not only strength in bearing and 
the intensity of unshakable conviction but the weight of 
that true dignity that is bred of Reverence. Pity and 


335 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


Terror are the children of Veneration. The Father punishes; 
recognising His Justice we compassionate the weakness 
that has deserved castigation and shudder in the knowledge 
of our kindred guilt. 

Humanity. The majesty of great tenderness. 

“Your gentleness shall force 
“ More than your force move us to gentleness.” 

Sympathy. That understanding which implies suffering, 
not the pangs of disappointed vanity but the pain that can 
be learned only in seeing a loved one suffer. 

Observation of the griefs and foibles of others. 

Whether it is necessary to have been drunk in order to 
simulate drunkenness is a large question. In argument it 
might be carried ad absurdum ; for example : whether it 
is necessary to have died in order to simulate the act of 
dying. 

I shall return to this question of drink. 

The great actor is intuitive, he practises a form of self¬ 
hypnosis in his portrayal of those emotions and weaknesses 
which may be alien to his own humanity, but to strike these 
chords convincingly he must first ring the tuning-fork 
which sounds the key-note of Sympathy. 

The Sense of Humour ; that is, the sense of proportion; 
or at least each is part of each and both are essential to 
the actor. Proportion as it affects gesture, that is to gay 
all illustrative comment—what is fit. Humour as it affects 
diction and emphasis, tonal values, pause, crescendo , and 
climax. 

Kean had this last nearly, by instinct. As Maeready 
said : w'hen he failed to grasp the root idea of a character 
instantly by intuition he could not master it by study. 

I do not believe that great acting is ever the result of a 


LETTER NUMBER FIFTY-SIX 


laborious process of psychological study. The light that 
filters into the brain by degrees will never flood it to inspira¬ 
tion, it is the meteoric flash of sudden revelation that irradi¬ 
ates—illumines nooks, corners and crannies that even 
sunlight never penetrates. 

Yet it is often part of an actor’s work to reconcile false 
psychology in a character—to blend strange elements and 
make them seem convincingly parts of one whole. It is 
one of the most fascinating aspects of the Art. It means 
often first night failure for the actor who gets the blame 
that is properly the author’s, but it is one of the things that 
makes a long run tolerable, and critics—if they knew— 
might give praise on the hundredth performance where they 
had nothing but censure for the first. 

I have a shrewd suspicion that there was never a really 
great actor who did not drink too much. I don’t mean 
get drunk habitually or even often, but make up, to some 
extent, alcoholically, for the exhaust of spirit that is inevit¬ 
able in playing a great scene. You may answer that material 
spirit (sic ?) could not replace the waste of the ethereal. 

I can’t argue it. I feel that I might myself have been a 
better actor if I were a better drinker—or a worse ; just as 
you regard it. Alcohol lifts the ratchet and lets the wheel 
spin freely : too much and the ratchet will not drop and catch 
control of the wheel again at the right moment. 

Do not imagine that I think alcohol can or ever could 
make up for lack of ability, experience, technique, inspiration 
or any other essential quality. It won’t supply what is 
not there, but it will heighten and spur abilities that are 
present and I do most emphatically affirm that applied to 
the right temperament at the right moment it will assist 
to its highest expression of certain effects ; for example, 


337 


LETTERS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACTOR 


the climax of Othello , Act III, certain scenes of Macbeth and 
Lear —and do the actor no harm, for its effect is dissipated 
in his effort. 

The picture of Kean with his bowl of boiling brandy in the 
wings is deplorable. To him it became a necessity in order 
to act at all. And the craving did not stop there, for he grew 
to need its impetus both before and after each effort. 

Disastrous ! 

The juice of the grape is a good servant: use him—or 
surely it should be her—with discretion. She is the ideal 
mistress, but a hell of a wife. 

What is Great Acting ? 

As I understand it is an exposition of some deep emotion 
or devastating passion so poignantly convincing that the 
public are lifted out of themselves and realise their sur¬ 
roundings only w r hen the actor leaves the stage or the curtain 
shuts him from their sight, when—to use Kean’s expression 
—“ they rise at him ! ” 

There are tricks w r ell known to old actors by means of 
which something of this effect can be created ; and w hen I 
say “ tricks ” I mean what may be called an illegitimate 
use of technique which the discerning will very readily 
detect. But I am assuming, for the purpose of my definition, 
that the occasion is a legitimate one deliberately designed 
by the dramatist for the actor to use and that the actor by 
his skill, his temperament and his personality uses it to the 
full. 

One day I will tell you of the great performances I have 
seen and why they live with me still. 

No doubt in time a new art form will evolve to take the 
place of Great Acting but it will not fill the void any more 
than the motor-charabanc replaces the stage-coach. True 


338 


LETTER NUMBER FIFTY SIX 


that it “ gets there ”—quicker and on better springs—but 
the speed is no compensation to the lover of horses. The 
modern cosmopolitan hotel is no substitute for the old fash¬ 
ioned English hostelry. What is to-day called Beer sits 
ill on the stomach of the lover of Brown October. The 
sophisticated concoction of logwood that is called Port 
does not compare with the ’47 of my youth. 

Yet it is true that in place of most things we have lost 
we have something that “ will do ” and I suppose the present 
acting “ does ” for the present generation. 

My view is that the present generation has “ done for ” 
Acting. 

I long to see the sparks fly. 

Central heating is a good thing—for corridors, ante¬ 
chambers, offices and restaurants, but who dares pretend it 
could ever take the place of the log-fire on the open hearth ? 

Yours, 


339 





INDEX 


Abingdon, William L. ...... 25 276 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. '* ‘.214,’ 322 

Actors’ Association .. .. 84, 150, 151,152, *153, 154, 155, 209 

Addison, Joseph .. .. .. .. .. .. t> 15 

Adelphi Theatre. 8 , 9 , 10 , 25, 71,’ 273, 276 

ADMIRABLE CRICHTON, THE .318, 319, 320 

ADVENTURE OF LADY URSULA, THE. 144 

Agricultural Hall .. .. .. .. .. .. 109 

Ainley, Henry . 242, 245, 246, 308, 316, 317 

ALCHEMIST, THE . 34 , 200 

Alcohol .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 337 

Alexander, Sir George. 8 , 145, 300 

Alexander, Lady .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 245 

ALEXANDER * THE GREAT (see THE RIVAL QUEENS) 201 

Alleyn, Edward.112,113,127 

ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 158,160,167 

Ambigu-Comique .. .. .. .. .. .. 302 

Ambition .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 12 

Anderson, Mary .. .. .. .. ... .. .. 266 

ANDROMAQUE . 136 

Angelo, Michel .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 317 

APOTHECARY, THE. 34 

Applause .. .. .. .-. .. .. .. 314 

Aquarium, Westminster .. .. .. .. .. 107, 108, 109 

ARABIAN NIGHTS, THE . ... 9 

Archer, Frank .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 68 

Archer William .. .. ... .. .. .. .. 213,265 

Arnold, Matthew .. .. .. .. .. .. 267 

Arnold, Samuel .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 255 

ARRAH-NA-POGUE.274, 275 

AS YOU LIKE IT . 138 

Ashwell, Lena .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 328 

Astley, John .. .. .. .. .« •. .. 319 

Astley’s Theatre .. .. .. .. ., . • 106, 107 

AUBERGE DES ADRETS , V . 302 

AURORA FLOYD . 13 

AVARIES, LES . 54 

Ball, Lewis .. .. •• . •• 68,79 

Balzac, Honore de .. .. • • • • • • • -260, 261 

Bancroft, Lady .. .. . • • • • • • • • • 78 

Bancroft, Sir Squire .. .. • • • • • • • • 78 

Barker, Harley Granville .. .. •• 145, 181, 182, 317 

Barnum, Phineas T. .. .. • • • • • ♦ • • 27, 230 

Barrett, George .. .. • • • • • • • * • • 25 


341 






























INDEX —cont i nued. 


Barrett, Wilson .. .. .. .. 5,15,20,25,76,181 

Barrie, Sir James Matthew .. .. .. .. 90,315, 318,319 

Barry, Shiel 276 

Bartholomew Fair . . .. .. •. • • • • 254 

BARTON MYSTERY, THE. 248 

Bateman, Leah .. .. .. .. .. •• •• 80,144 

Baughan, Edward Algernon .. .. .. .. •. B8 

Bayliss, Lilian .. .. .. .. . • • • • • 269 

Beaumont, Francis (and Fletcher) .. .. 136,207,269,270 

BECKET .7, 327, 328, 331 

Bedford, Henry .. .. .. .. • • • • • • 274 

Bedford, Paul .. .. .. .. .. • • • • 276 

Bell, Stanley . 245 

BELLE’S STRATAGEM, THE . 80, 304 

Bellew, J. C. M. .. .. .. .. . • •• •• 3 7 

Bel lew, Kyrle .9, 17, 71 

Bellew, Miss Kyrle .. .. .. .. •. • • 19, 71 

BELLS, THE . 13, 33, 50, 76, 291, 304, 320 

BELLS OF HASLEMERE, THE . 244 

Bellwood, Bessie .. .. .. •. • • • • 164 

BELPHEGOR. 20 

BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT, THE 58 

Benjamin, M. .. .. .. .. .. •. ..302, 303 

Bennett, Arnold .. .. .. .. .. .. . • 170 

Benson, Sir Frank.. .. .. .. .. .. . • 148 

Beranger, Pierre-Jean .. .. .. .. .. • • 281 

Beringer, Esm6 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 289 

Berlioz, Hector .. .. .. .. .. .. 55 

Besier, Rudolph .. .. .. .. .. .. • • 182 

Bernard-Beere, Mrs. .. .. .. .. .. .. 69, 78 

Bernhardt, Sarah .. .. .. .. .. ..288, 335 

BETSY. 9 

Betterton, Thomas .. 35, 105, 190, 200, 203, 204, 205, 206, 

207, 211, 269 

-in Hamlet . 205 

-in Julius Ccesar . 206 

-in King Henry the Fourth , Part I. .. .. .. .. .. 206 

-in The Maid’s Tragedy .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 207,269 

-in Othello . 2a5 

-in Twelfth Night . 206 

Beveridge, J. D. 25, 244,274, 276 

BILLETED . 43 

Billington, Mrs. John .. .. .. .. .. .. 70 

BIRD OF PARADISE, THE. 220 

Bishop, Alfred .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 319 

Bj6rnsterne-Bj6rnsen .. .. .. .. .. .. 155 

Blackfriars Theatre .. .. .. .. .. .. 205 

Blakeley, William .. .. .. .. .. .. 80 


342 
































INDEX— continued. 


L 


Blondin 

Boccaccio, Giovanni 
Bohemianism 
Bologna, John 
Bonehill, Bessie 
Booth, Edwin 
Boucicault, Dion .. 
Bourchier, Arthur 
BOY BOB 
Boyne, Leonard 
Braithwaite, Lilian 
Brandram, Samuel 
BRIDAL, THE 
Brieux, Eugene 
Brigadier Gerard 
BRIGHTON 

Brillat-Savarin, Anthelme 
Brooke, E. H. 

Brooke, Rupert 
Brookfield, Charles 
Brough, Lionel 
Browne, Graham 
Brown-Potter, Mrs. 
Buchanan, Robert 
Buckstone, John Baldwin 
BUNCH OF VIOLETS, A 
Burbage, Richard 


-in Macbeth 

-in The Merchant of Venice 

-in Othello 

Byford, Roy 
Byron, Henry J. 

Byron, Lord 


107 

127, 157, 160, 167 
191 
254 
164 

.. 323, 333, 335 

.. 249, 273, 275 
145 
148 

.. 69, 81 

220 
17 


. 269, 270 

. 53, 251 

. 103 

. 9 

. 261 

. 20 

. 192 

. 78 

.70, 78 

. 182 

. 71 

. 81 

. 275 

. 294 

34, 116, 117, 126, 127, 128, 129f 130j 137 
138,186,194, 205, 220, 257, 334, 335 

. 130 

. 34, 129, 220 

. 128 

. 64 

. 77, 244, 305 

. 46, 201, 213, 256 


CAIN . 

Caleb Williams 

Calhoun, Eleanor 

Calvert, Louis 

Campbell, Mrs. Patrick .. 

CAPTAIN DREW ON LEAVE 

CARDINAL, THE 

Carew, James 

Carey, Henry 

Carlyle, Thomas. 

Carrington, Murray 
Carroll, Sidney 

Carson, Murray. 


46 

244 

78 

159, 291 
69, 294 
163 

181, 182 
150 
254 
332 
300 
118, 189 
103, 163 


343 


z 















































I 


INDEX— continued. 


Carter, John .. .. .. .. .. • • • • 274 

Carton, R. C.36, 126 

Cartwright, Charles .. .. .. .. 25, 243, 244, 300 

Casablanca .. .. .. .. .. .. • • 184 

CASE OF REBELLIOUS SUSAN, THE. 163 

CATHERINE AND PETRUCHIO (see KATHARINE AND 

PETRUCHIO). 305 

Catherington .. .. .. .. .. .. . • 266 

CATO . 4, 15 

Cavendish, Ada .. .. • .. .. .. .. .. 68,60 

Cecil, Arthur .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 9, 76 

Celeste, Madame .. .. .. .. .. • • 276 

Chambers, Mary (Mrs. Edmund Kean) .. .. .. 255 

Chapman, Patty .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 266 

CHARLES THE FIRST . 127, 326, 327 

CHATTERTON. 15 

Chatterton, F. B. .. .. .. .. 271 

CHEATING CHEATERS . 10 

Cheiro . 275 

Chesterton, Gilbert Keith .. .. .. .. .. 91 

CHEVALIER AU MASQUE, LE . 102 

“Chinese Slavery” . 89, 322 

Chippendale, Mrs... .. .. .. .. .. .. 70 

Christian Science .. .. .. .. .. .. 1, 87 

CHU-CHIN-CHOW . 1, 24, 209 

Cibber, Colley .. .. 31, 33, 204, 206, 207, 208, 267, 309 

Cicero, Marcus Tullius .. .. .. .. .. .. 178 

CINDER-ELLEN UP-TOO-LATE. 10 

CITY MADAM, THE.199, 212 

Clarence, Oliver B. .. .. .. .. .. .. 64 

Claribel . 43 

CLARISSA 81 

Clarke, John Sleeper .. .. .. .. .. .. 70 

Class-hatred . 53, 92, 175, 236 

CLAUDIAN . 20 

Clayton, John .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 9, 76 

CLOCHES DE CORNEVILLE , LES . 64 

Cochran, Charles Blake .. .. .. .. .. .. 77 

Coghlan, Charles .. .. .. .. .. .. 69 

Coleridge, Stephen T. .. .. .. .. .. 139, 213 

Coliseum .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 108 

COLLEEN BAWN, THE . 275 

Colman, George .. ... .. .. .. .. .. 244 

Comedy Theatre .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 9 

Compton, Edward .. .. .. .. .. 79, 80,276 

Compton, Miss (Katherine) .. .. .. .. .. 36, 37 

Condell, Henry .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 127 

Congreve, William .. .. .. .. .. .. 204 


344 
















INDEX— continued. 


Conrad, Joseph 
Conti, Italia 
Conway, H. B. 

Cooke, George Frederick 
Cooper, Clifford .. 

Cooper, Frank 
Cooper, Gladys 
Coquel in, Jean 
Corelli, Marie 
CORIOLANUS .. 

Corneille, Pierre 

Cornwall, Barry (Bryan Walter Proctor) 
CORSICAN BROTHERS, THE 
COUNTRY GIRL, THE 
COURR1ER DE LYON, LE 
Court Theatre 
Covent Garden Opera House .. 105, 170, 

Cox v. Kean 
Crawford, F. Marion 
Cremorne Gardens 
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 
Critchett, Sir Anderson .. 

Criterion Theatre 
Cushman, Charlotte 
CYMBELINE 
CYRANO DE BERGERAC .. 162, 


10, 98, 183 


18 , 


, 184, 


55, 


268, 
68 , 
249, 
9, 80, 243, 
211, 245, 269, 287, 


.. 251, 

9, 162, 

.. 158, 
181, 182, 183, 184, 


172 

147 

81 

210 

25 

276 

65 

335 

20 

199 

136 

201 

330 

70 

330 

327 

293 

257 

323 

108 

252 

36 

163 

289 

167 

320 


DADDIES 

DANTE 

Dante degli Aligheri 
Dallas, J. J. 

DAVID GARRICK 
Davenant, Sir William 
De Profundis 
DEAD HEART. THE 
DEAR BRUTUS 
DEARER THAN LIFE 
Decameron , The 
Delacour, M. 

Delavigne, Casimir 
DEMI-MONDE, LE 
Democracy 
D’Ennery, Adolphe 
Devrient, Ludwig 
DIANA OF DOBSON’S 
Dibdin, Charles 
Dickens, Charles .. 
Dillon, Charles 


35, 67, 


12 


, 232 


220 
329 
133 

10 

9, 80, 162 
205 

253 

329 
90, 315 

304 
157, 158 

330 
55, 268 

9 

233, 234 
48 
129 
319 

254 
44, 305 

20 


345 
























INDEX— continued. 


DIPLOMACY 
Disraeli, Benjamin 
D1VORCONS 

DON ’. 

DON CESAR DE BAZAN 
Donelly, Ignatius 

DORA . 

Dostoievsky, Feodor 
DOUGLAS 
Downes, John 
Drama League 
Drayton, Alfred 

DRINK. 

Drink water, John 

Drury, Doctor 

Drury Lane, Theatre Royal 


Dumas, Alexandre 

Dumas fils , Alexandre 
Du Maurier, George 
Du Maurier, Sir Gerald .. 
Dunville, T. E. 

Duquesne, Edmond 
Duse, Eleonora 
Dyall, Franklin .. 


..8, 315 

124 

. 65 

. 182 

. 48 

111 

8 

. 192,251 

. 266 

. 204, 205 

.. 226, 227, 241 

. 308 

. 76 

. 280, 322 

. 255 

!! 8, 25, 34, 82, 105, 166, 170, 196, 

205, 208, 210, 211, 245, 254, 255, 
256, 257, 258, 265, 266, 271, 296 
22, 35, 43, 55, 80, 98, 103, 111, 114, 115, 
116, 117, 139, 186, 254, 299 

9,65,114 

. 109, 256 

98, 190, 191, 193, 315, 319 

. 165 

. 103 

.16, 17 

. 146 


Eadie, Dennis 

EARL OF WARWICK, THE .. 
Earl’s Court Exhibition 

EAST LYNNE. 

Education 
Edwardes, George 
Elton, George 
Elton, William 
Emerson, Ralph Waldo 
Emery, Winifred 

ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE, AN 

ENFANT PRODIGUE , V 

Envy 

Equality 

Ethardo 

Euclid 

EUGENE ARAM. 

Evans, Edith 

Everill, Frederick 

EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR 


319 

16 

.. 108, 214 
9, 13, 71 
92 
77 

.. 172, 308 
10 
110 
59, 69, 80 
10 
10 

.. 174, 175 
83, 141, 232, 238 

.. 107, 108 
. 183, 184, 233 

.. 127, 323 
289 
270 
200 


346 






































INDEX— continued. 


Evidence. 

Exploiting Personality .. .. *. ’. 4 , 144, 228, 292,* 815, 317 


Faber, Leslie 

FAIR PENITENT, THE 

Farini 

Farjeon, Herbert 
Farquhar, George 
Farren, Nellie 
Farren, III. William 
Farren, IV. William 
FATAL WEDDING, THE 

Faucit, Helen . 

FAUST. 

-Sir Henry Irving in 

-Charles Kean in 

Fawn, James 

Fechter, Charles Albert .. 
Fernandez, James 
Feuillet. Octave 
Field, Nathan 
Fielding, Henry 
Firmin, M. .. 

Fletcher, John (and Beaumont) 

Foch, Marshal 

Foli, Signor 

Food Controller 

FOOL’S REVENGE, THE 

Forbes-Robertson, Sir Johnstone 

-in Hamlet 

-in King A rthur 

-in King Henry the Eighth 

-in Masks and Faces 

-in Much Ado About Nothing 

-in The School for Scandal 

Ford, John 
Forrester, Maud 
FORTY THIEVES, THE 
FOURTEEN DAYS 
Freear, Louie 

FRINGE OF SOCIETY, THE. 
Fulton, Charles 

Fun .. .. . 


308 

18 

.. 107, 109 
118 
204 
10 

..9, 10, 68, 69, 80 

68, 70, 82 
16 

.. 212, 258 
7, 127, 305 

. 306 

268,305 
.. 164, 271, 272 
98, 117, 308 
..25, 68, 79, 302 
294 
127 
33 
302 

136, 207, 269, 270 
86 
44 

.. 83, 84 

333 


69, 78, 294, 295, 302, 328 

.294, 295 

. 328 

. 328 

. 78 

. 302 

. 69 

. 136 

. 107 

. 77 

. 9 

. 148 

. 9 

. 25, 223 

. 284 


Gaiety Theatre .. .. 10, 77, 80, 271, 273, 305, 306 

Galsworthy, John .. .. .. .. .. .. 53, 317 

GAMESTER, THE . 211 


347 







































INDEX —coni inued. 


Garrick, David 


-in The A pothecary 

-in Hamlet 

-in King Lear 

-in Macbeth .. 

—-in Othello 

-in Romeo and Juliet 


6 , 86, 88, 89, 90, 91 


Garrick, Mrs. David (Eva Violette nee Viegel) 

Garrick Theatre 

Gastibelza 

Gauthier, Theophile 

GENERAL POST . 

Genius 

George, A. E. 

George, David Lloyd 
German, Edward 
Germany 

Gerard, Florence .. 

GHOSTS. 

Gilbert, Sir William Schwenk 
Gilchrist, Connie 
Gill, Basil 
Giradin, l£mile de 
GIRL WHO TOOK THE WRONG TURN 
Gladstone, William Ewart 
Glennev, Charles 
Globe Theatre, Bankside 
Globe Theatre, Newcastle Street 
Globe Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue 
Glover, Fred 
Glover, Mrs. 

Godfrey Charles 
Godwin, William 
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 
Goldsmith, Oliver 
Gomersal, Edward 
Grand Manner 

GREAT ADVENTURE, THE 
GREAT CONSPIRACY, THE 
GREAT PINK PEARL, THE 
Green, Dorothy 
GREEN BUSHES, THE 
Greene, Clayton 
Greet, Philip Ben 
Grey, Mary 
Grimaldi, Joseph 


92, 


28, 12‘ 


44 , 


16, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 126, 
170, 190, 194, 195, 200, 204, 205, 206, 
207, 209, 211, 262, 305, 306 

34 
33 
31 

33, 207 
35, 205 
33 

35, 200 
3, 8, 245 
281 
55 
120 
202, 332 
103 
1, 77,231 
828 
170, 234 
276 
54 
303 
273 
263 

171 
50 

275 
301 
138 
148 

172 
13 

198 
164 
244 
136 
333 
103 
263, 294 
316, 317 
103 
36 
69 

275, 276 
308 
98, 247 
144 
254 


NG, THE 


98, 


25, 


112 , 


82. 262 


170, 

10 , 


81, 

112 , 


327, 


348 



























INDEX— continued . 


Grossmith, George 
Grossmith, Weedon 
Groves, Charles 
Grundy, Sydney .. 

Habit 

Hackney, Mabel 
Haddon, Archibald 
Hall, John .. 
Hall-Caine, Derwent 
HAMLET .. 


-Thomas Betterton in 

-Sir J. Forbes-Bobertson in 

-David Garrick in 

--—Sir Henry Irving in 


-H. B. Irving in 
-Charles Kean in 


-Edmund Kean in 

--John Philip Kemble in 

-W. C. Macready in .. 

-Ellen Terry in 

11 ANN ETON, LE 
HARBOUR LIGHTS, THE 
Hardacre, John Pitt 
Hare, Sir John 
Harris, Sir Augustus 
Harvey, Sir John Martin 
Harvey, Lady Martin 
Hawkins, F. W. 

Hawtrey, Sir Charles 
Hawtrey, George .. 
Haymarket Theatre 
Hazlitt, William . . 
HELEN WITH THE HI 
Henslowe, Philip 
Herbert, Henry 
HEROD 

Herrick. Robert .. 

Hicks, Seymour .. 

Hill, Jenny 

Hill, W. H. 

His Majesty’s Theatre 
Hoey, Iris .. 


.. 44, 303 

303 
9 

80, 160, 294 

6 , 285 
251 
118 
205 
20 

12, 27, 31, 49, 71, 72, 112, 127, 129, 
137, 139, 140, 141, 154, 185, 186, 199, 
200, 201, 205, 214, 218, 246, 249, 259, 
266, 267, 288, 289, 291, 292, 293, 294, 
295, 296, 297, 298, 309, 325, 332 

205 
.294,295 
33 

129,249,291, 292, 293,295, 296.297, 
298, 332 , 

249 
266 

129, 199, 259 
15 
214 
294 
251 
76 
13 

103, 245 
. 162, 296 
293, 294 
294 
201 
193, 253 
64 

220, 245, 294 
4, 201, 332 
244 
127 
68 
181 
281 

. 190, 193 
. 108, 109 
. 64 

160, 294 
43 






















INDEX— continued. 


Hogarth, William .. .. .. .. .. .. 29 

Hoi inshed, Raphael .. .. .. .. .. .. 127 

Holloway, Baliol .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 69 

Home, John .. .. .. .. .. ‘ . ... 266 

HOME AND BEAUTY. 230 

Housman, Laurence .. .. .. .. .. .. 181 

Howe, Henry .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 302 

Huddart, Charles .. .. .. .. .. .. 196 

Hudson, Charles .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 25, 304 

Hugo, Victor . 48, 55,281,333 

Hughes, Mrs. .. .. .. .. .. .. ... 203 

Hull Theatre Royal .. .. .. ... .. .. 201 

HUMAN NATURE . 9 

HYDE PARK. 105 

Ibsen, Henrik . 3, 10, 14, 26, 54, 72, 126 

IDEAL HUSBAND, THE . 253 

IN HIS POWER 300 

IN THE DAYS OF THE DUKE. 243 

IN THE NIGHT . 307, 308, 309 

In the Palace of the King .. .. .. .. .. 323 

INCUBUS, THE. 251 

INGOMAR. 265 

Intentions .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 253 

ION . 269, 271 

IRENE WYCHERLEY. 319 

IRON CHEST, THE. 198, 201, 244 

Irving, Sir Henry .. .. 2, 7, 8, 20, 24, 31, 70, 76, 80, 85, 86, 98, 

102, 107, 127, 129, 144, 153, 158, 186, 

189, 190, 206, 248, 249, 250, 268, 269, 

291, 292, 293, 295, 296, 297, 298, 300, 

301, 302, 303, 304, 305, 306, 315, 320, 

321, 322, 323, 324, 325, 326, 327, 328, 

329, 331, 333, 335 

-in Becket . 7, 315, 327, 328, 331 

-in The Belle’s Stratagem . 80, 304 

- in The Bells . 33,76,291,320 

-in Charles the First . 315, 326, 327 

-in Cymbeline .. .. .. .. .. .. 158 

-in Dante . 329 

-in The Dead Heart .. .. .. .. .. .. 329 

-in Dearer than Life . 304 

-in Eugene Aram . 323 

-in Faust . 305 

-in Hamlet .. .. 129, 249, 291, 292, 293, 295, 296, 297, 298, 332 

-in Jingle . 248, 304 

-in Katharine and Petruchio . 305, 306 

-i n j King Arthur . 328 


350 









































INDEX— continued , 


Irving, Sir Henry— continued. 

-in King Henry the Eighth .. 

-in King Lear 

- -in Louis the Eleventh 

-in The Lyons Mail .. 

-in Macbeth . 

-in Madame Sans-Gene 

-in The Merchant of Venice 

-in Much Ado About Nothing 

-in Olivia 

-in Othello 

—-in Philip 

-in Raising the Wind 

-in Ravensvoood 

-in Richelieu .. 

-in Robert Macaire .. 

-in Robespierre 

-in Romeo and Juliet 

-in A Story of Waterloo 

-in Two Roses 

-in Uncle Dick’s Darling .. 

-in Vanderdecken 

Irving, H. B. 

-in The Admirable Crichton 

-in The Barton Mystery 

-in The Bells .. 

-in Hamlet 

-in Louis the Eleventh 

-in The Lyons Mail 

-in Much Ado About Nothitig 

-in Othello 

-in The Silver King 

-in A Story of Waterloo 

-in The Tree of Knowledge 

Irving, Laurence .. 

-in The Lily .. 

-in Othello 

-in Typhoon 

-in The Unwritten Law 


247, 


IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO MEND 


246, 249, 250, 


320, 


268, 

3(H, 


301, 


247,251, 


7, 
315, 
320, 
323, 

129, 

302, 

327, 

129, 

248, 

323, 


291, 


19, 


247, 

247, 

248, 


o-,o 


251, 


328 
129 

321 

329 
324 
102 
3454 
315 
333 
260 
323 

304 
329 

322 
303 
329 
329 
250 

305 
305 

323 
320 

319 

248 

320 

249 

250 
250 
301 

249 
248 

250 
320 
329 
252 
252 

251 

252 
53 


JACK O’ JINGLES . 220 

Jackson, Harry .. .. .. . • • • • • • • 193 

James, David .. .. • • • • • • ♦ • 9, 79, 80 

Jarman, Herbert .. .. .. .. • • • • • • 320 

Jeffreys, Ellis .. .. . • • • • • • • • • 64 

Jeffries, Maud .. .. •. • • • • • • • • 131 

Jefferson, Joseph .. .. . • • • • • • • • • 70 


351 




























































INDEX— continued. 


Jerrold, Douglas 

Joanny (Jean-Baptiste Bernan Brissebard) 
Johnson, Doctor 
Jones, Henry Arthur 
Jonson, Ben 

JOHN BULL . 

JOSEPH’S SWEETHEART .. 

JUDITH. 

JULIUS C.ESAR . 

JUSTICE. 


195 

116 

.. 112,144,195 

228 

112, 113, 136, 200 
271 
81 

.. 170, 171 
245, 246 , 252, 326 
.. 53, 319 


KATHARINE AND PETRUCHIO (also CATHERINE AND 


PETRUCHIO) 
Kean, Charles 

-in The Corsican Brothers .. 

-in Douglas .. 

-in Faust 

-in Hamlet 

-in King Henry the Eighth 

-in King Richard the Third 


-‘in Louis the Eleventh 

—-in Macbeth 

- -in The Merchant of Venice 

--in The Merry Wives of Windsor 

-in Othello 

-in Pauline 

-in Romeo and Juliet.. 

Kean, Mrs. Charles (Ellen Tree) 

Kean, Edmund .. 15, 33, 35, 98, 116, 129, 184, 189, 190, 194, 

195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 210, 211, 212, 
213, 244, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 291, 324, 330, 335, 336, 
338 .. 

-in The City Madam 

-in Coriolanus 


..305, 306 
249, 255, 257, 258, 259, 265, 266, 
267, 268, 269, 272, 305 

268 
266 
268, 305 
266 
267 
267 
268, 321 
267 
267 
267 

267 

268 
267 
249 


249 


n Every Man in His Humour 
n Hamlet 
n The Iron Chest 
n King Richard the Third 
n Macbeth .. 
n The Merchant of Venice 
n A Neio Way to Pay Old Debts 
n Othello 
n The Revenge 
n The Rival Queens 
n Romeo and Juliet 
n The Tobacconist 


Kean, Mrs. Edmund (Mary Chambers) 


129, 


199 

199 

200 

129, 199, 259 
199 

198 

199 
324 
256 
197 

199 

.200, 201 

.199,200 

200 

255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 266 


195, 


196, 


197, 

33, 

116, 


257, 

198, 

129, 


352 
































INDEX— continued . 


Kean, Howard 

KEAN OU GENIE ET DESORDRE 
Keane, Doris 

Kelly, W. W. 

Kemble, Fanny (Frances Anne) 
Kemble, Henry 
Kemble, John Philip 


Kendal, William Hunter 
Kendal, Mrs. W. H. 
Kenney, James 
Ivilligrew, Thomas 
King, Claude 
KING AND NO KING 
KING ARTHUR 
KING JOHN 
KING LEAR 


4, 7, 11, 1 
214, 254, 


5, 17, 116, 204, 207, 
265 


8 , 


7, 31, 34, 120, 139, 


198, 201, 208 


170, 


KING HENRY THE FOURTH (Parts I and II) 31, 115, 

KING HENRY THE FIFTH. .. 31, 

KING HENRY THE SIXTH (Parts I, II and III) 

KING HENRY THE EIGHTH 
KING RICHARD THE SECOND 
KING RICHARD THE THIRD .. 31 

Kingston, Thomas 
Kingsway Theatre 
KNIFE, THE 
Knight, Joseph 
Knowles, J. Sheridan 

Kotzebue, August, Friedrich, Ferdinand Von 
Kreisler, Fritz 

La Rochefoucauld, Fran 5 ois, Due de 
Lacressonni&re, M. 

LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET 

LADY GODIVA . 

LADY HUNTWORTH’S EXPERIMENT 


LADY OF LYONS, THE 
LADY WINDERMERE’S FAN 
Lancashire Plays 
Lang, Matheson .. 

Langtry, Mrs. (Lily) 

Law of Compensation 
League of Nations 
Lee, Nathaniel 
Lemaitre, Frederic 

Leslie, Fred 
Lever, Charles 


9, 71 


81, 

20 ,' 


255, 259 
35 

145, 146 
9 

212 
78, 319 
210 , 211 , 

8 , 24 
24, 261 
304 
203 
171 
270 
328 
98 

244, 270 
263, 270 
115, 138 
31, 269 
7, 328 
31, 269 
, 246, 267 
275 
252, 307 
19 
26 

213, 269 
213 
334 


48, 98, 117, 
303, 335 


62, 65 
330 
13 

106,107 
37 

185, 212, 266 
8 

23, 90 
69, 102, 300 

69 

141, 142, 178 
124 
200 

254, 256, 260, 302, 

10, 76, 80, 273 
209 


353 

























INDEX— continued. 


Lewes, George Henry 
Lewes, Miriam 
LIARS, THE 

LIGHTS OF HOME, THE 
LILY, THE 

Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre 
Liszt, Franz 

LITTLE BIT OF FLUFF, A 

Littlewood, Samuel Robinson 

Litton, Marie 

Living Corpse , The 

Lloyd, Marie 

Logan, Stanley 

Lohr, Marie 

Lomas, Herbert 

London County Council .. 

Loraine, Robert 

LORD AND LADY ALGY 

LORD ANERLEY 

LOST LEADER, THE .. 

LOUIS THE ELEVENTH 

-Sir Henry Irving in 

-H. B. Irving in 

-Charles Kean in 

LOVE A LA MODE 
Loved ay, Henry J. 

Lovelace, Richard 

Lovell, Maria 

LYONS MAIL, THE .. 

-Sir Henry Irving in 

-H. B. Irving in 

Lyceum Theatre 
Lyric Theatre 
Lytton, Bulwer 
MACBETH 


2 , 8 , 


09, 188, 


25, lOo 


184 


208, 


249, 


43 , 


24, 

71, 


09, 


185, 


243, 

247, 

315, 

. .247, 
268, 


247 


304, 320, 
..304, 320, 
247, 

, 127, 2G0, 304, 306, 


-Richard Burbage in 

-David Garrick in 

-Sir Henry Irving in 

-Charles Kean in 

-Edmund Kean in 

-Charles Macklin in . 

-W. C. Macready in 

-Ernest Milton in 

-Samuel Phelps in 

-Sarah Siddons in 

-Ellen Terry in 


71, 212, 322, 
27, 33, 49, 98, 115, 130, 137, 138, 
186, 199, 207, 208, 218, 252, 254, 
270, 271, 338 


33 

323 


207 

213 

270 


201 

261 

228 

9 

252 
204 
85 
162 
118 
271 
245 
165 
65 
220 
215 
306 

320 
37 

145 

244 

240 

321 
250 
321 
207 
325 
281 
265 
829 

329 
250 

330 
145 

323 
139 

267, 

130 
, 207 
, 324 
267 
199 
,208 
,270 
98 
.271 
16 

324 


354 
















































INDEX— continued. 


Macdermott, G. H. (“The Great”).109, 164 

Mackinlay, John .. .. .. .. .. .. 44 

MacKinnel, Norman .. .. .. .. .. .. 243 

Mackintosh, William .. .. .. .. .. .. 9 

Macklin, Charles. 34, 207, 208 , 209, 211, 270 

-in King Richard the Third . 208 

-in Love a la Mode 207 

-in Macbeth .207, 208 

-in The Man o’ the World . 207 

-in The Merchant of Venice .. .. .. .. .. .. 207 

Maclean, John .25, G 9 , 70 

Macready, William Charles 98, 116, 199, 206, 211, 212, 213, 214, 

263, 265, 266, 267, 269, 270, 322, 323, 
336 

-in The Gamester .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..211,212 

-in Hamlet . 214 

-in King Lear . 213 

-in The Lady of Lyons .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 212 

-in Macbeth .213, 270 

-in Much Ado About Nothing . .. 212 

-in Othello .116, 212, 214 

-in Richelieu .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . .212, 322 

-in Romeo and Juliet .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 211 

-in The Stranger .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 213 

-in Virginius .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . .212, 213 

-in Werner .212, 213 

MADAME SANS-GENE 102 

MADEMOISELLE DE BELLE-ISLE . 160 

MAGISTRATE, THE. 9, 76 

MAID’S TRAGEDY, THE . 207, 269 

Male Impersonation .. .. .. .. .. .. 222 

Malleson, Miles .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 244, 289 

Manners. 39, 57, 58, 178, 179, 262 

MAN AND SUPERMAN . 171 

MAN O’ THE WORLD, THE . 207 

MANXMAN, THE . 20 

MARATRE , LA . 261 

MARI DE LA VEUVE , LE . 43 

Maria Theresa, Empress .. .. .. .. .. 35 

MARIAGE SOUS LOUIS QUINZE, UN . 80 

Marie .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 112 

Marlowe, Christopher .. .. .. .. .. .. 190 

MARRIAGE . 9 

MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE, A . 80 

Marry at, Captain .. .. .. .. .. .. . • 323 

Marshall, Ann .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 203 

Marshall, Beck (Rebecca) ... .. .. .. •• 105,203 

Marylebone Theatre .. ... .. .. .. .. 28 


355 
















































INDEX— continued. 





MASKS AND FACES 
MASQUERADERS, THE 
Massinger, Philip .. 

Mathews, Charles 
Matthison, Edith Wynne 
Max, M. de 

MAZEPPA . 

McCarthy, Lillah 
McIntosh, Madge 
Mead, Tom 

MEASURE FOR MEASURE .. 

Megone, Norfolk 

Melingue, Etienne-Marin 

Melodrama 

Melville, Walter 

Menken, Adah Isaacs 

MERCHANT OF VENICE, THE 


-Richard Burbage in 

-Edith Evans in 

-Sir Henry Irving in 

-Charles Kean in 

-Edmund Kean in. 

-Charles Macklin in .. 

-Miles Malleson in 

-Maurice Moscovitch in 

-Cathleen Nesbitt in 

Middle Class 

MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM 


Military Tournament 

Millard, Evelyn 

Milton, Ernest 

Milton, John 

MIRACLE, THE 

Moliere (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin 

Mollison, William 

Molloy, J. F. 

MONSIEUR BEAUCAIRE 
Monte Cristo 
MONTJOYE 


Moodie, Louise 
Moore, Mary 
Moreau, M. 
Morrison, George E. 
Moscovitch, Maurice 



77, 78, 79 

. 145 

136, 194, 198, 199, 212 
43, 70, 191, 304 
78, 249 
251 
106, 107 
171 
78 
270 
160, 167 
222 

48, 98, 117, 126, 186, 335 

22, 46, 49, 50, 138, 139 

.39, 176 

. 107 

34, 116, 127, 129, 138, 

195, 196, 197, 219, 220, 

257, 267, 289, 324 

34, 129, 220 
289 


129 


, A 


195 


, 196, 


.129, 324 
267 

197, 257, 324 
207 
289 
. .289, 290 
289 
.. 176 , 237 
31, 146, 147, 148, 
270, 271 

109 
249 

98 
205 
170 

113, 136 

263, 264 
201 
81, 82 

110 
294 
294 

80 
330 

26, 118 
... 278, 289, 290 


68 , 


356 


























INDEX— continued. 


MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING .. .. 137, 300, 301, 302 

-Sir George Alexander in. 300 

-Murray Carrington in . 300 

-James Fernandez in .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 302 

—-Sir J. Forbes-Robertson in .. .. .. .. .. .. 302 

-Charles Glenney in .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 301 

-Henry Howe in . 302 

-Sir Henry Irving in . 300, 301, 302, 315 

-—H. B. Irving in . 301 

--Matheson Lang in .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 300 

-W. C. Macready in .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 212 

-Sarah Siddons in .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 16 

-William Terriss in. 302 

-Ellen Terry in .300, 301 

-Fred Terry in .. .. .. .. .. .' .. .. 302 

Munden, J. S. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 198 

MYSTERY OF A HANSOM CAB, THE. 13 

Napoleon. 9, 102, 103, 263 

Nares, Owen .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 226 

National Service Board .. .. .. .. .. .. 38, 47 

NAUGHTY WIFE, THE . 64 

Neilson, Adelaide .. .. .. .. .. .. 71 

Neilson, Julia .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 98, 148 

NERO . 294 

Nesbitt, Cathleen .. .. .. .. .. .. 289 

Nethersole, Olga .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 10 

Neville, Henry .. ..25, G7, 68 , 69, 70, 71, 79, 274, 276 

-in Arrah-na-Pogue . 274 

-in The Green Bushes .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 276 

-in Masks and Faces .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 79 


-in The Rivals 
-in The School for Scandal 


NEW WAY TO PAY OLD DEBTS, A 
Newton, Henry Chance 
Nicholson, H. O. .. 

Notes on a Cellar-Book .. 
NOTORIOUS MRS. EBBSMITH, THE 


71 

.. 67, 69 
198, 201 
26 
144 
260 
3 


OCTOROON, THE 
(EPIDUS REX .. 

Old Vic., The 
Olympia 

Olympic Theatre 
ONLY WAY, THE 
Opera Comique Theatre 


24 


98, 


OTHELLO 


13 

. 27, 170 
269, 288 

. 108, 170 
9 

287 
10, 77, 78 


27, 34, 35, 44, 116, 117, 127. 128, 129, 139, 187 
197, 201, 203, 205. 214, 219, 220. 248, 249, 252, 
260, 267, 270, 271, 338 


357 





































INDEX— continued. 


OTHELLO— continued. 

-Thomas Betterton in 

-Richard Burbage in 

-David Garrick in 

-Sir Henry Irving in 

-H. B. Irving in 

-Laurence Irving in .. 

-Charles Kean in 

-Edmund Kean in .. 

—--W. C. Macready in .. 

-Edith Wynne Matthison in 

-Evelyn Millard in .. 

-Samuel Phelps in 

-Sir Herbert Tree in .. 

-Lewis Waller in 

Otway, Thomas 
OUR BOYS 
Owen, Reginald 
Oxford Music Hall 


205 

128 

35 

..129,260 
. .248, 249 
252 
267 

116, 129, 197 
116,212, 214 
249 
249 
. .270, 271 
252 
. .248, 249 
37 
9 
308 
164 


Pacifism 

Paderewski, Ignace Jan .. 
Paginini, Nicolo 
Palmer, John 
Palmerston, Lord 
Pantomime 
Park Theatre 
Parker, Louis Napoleon .. 
Pateman, Bella 
Pateman, Robert 
Paton, Sir Joseph Noel .. 
Patriotism 
Paulin-Menier, M. .. 
PAULINE 

Paulyanthe, Docteur .. 
Pauncefort, Claire (Georgina) 
Pauncefort, Miss (Georgina) 
Pavilion 
Peele, G. 

Pepys, Samuel 
Pettitt, Henry 
Phelps, Samuel 

-in All's Well That Ends Well 

-in The Bridal 

-in Ion 

- in John Bull.. 

-in King and no King 


. 89 

. 334 

. 334 

. 68 

. 124 

166 

. 44 

.162, 181, 182 

. 276 

. 32,276 

. 147 

. 89 

. 249 

. 268 

. 302, 303 

. 70, 296 

. 70,296 

.162, 163 

.112, 113 

. 105, 203, 204 

.9, 236 

98, 189, 207, 265, 266, 269, 270, 271, 272, 


333 


270 
. .269, 270 
. .269, 271 


271 

270 


358 













































INDEX —cont inned. 


Phelps, Samuel —continued. 

-in King Henry the Fourth (Parts I and II) 

-in King Lear . 

-in Macbeth . 

-in The Man o’ the World .. 

-in A Midsummer Night’s Dream 

— -in Othello . 

-in The Taming of the Shrev) 

PHILIP 

Philips, Stephen .. 

Philp, Elizabeth .. 

Piccadilly Review .. 

PICKPOCKET, THE 
Pigeon-holing 
Pinero, Sir Arthur Wing .. .. 3, 4, 7, 9, 

PINK DOMINOES 
Planquette, Robert 
Plutarch 

Poetry, Form in .. 

Prince of Wales’ Theatre 
Princess’ Theatre .. .. 8, 9, 206 

PRIVATE SECRETARY, THE 
Procter, Harry 
Propaganda theatre 
PROVOKED WIFE, THE 
PRUNELLA 
PURPLE MASK, THE 
Pussyfoot 

QUALITY STREET 
Quart ermain, Leon 
QUEEN MARY 
Queen’s Theatre, Long Acre 
Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur 
Quiney, Thomas .. 

Quinn, James 
QUINNEY’S 

Rabelais, Francois 
Rachel (Elisa F61ix) 

Racine, Jean 
Rachmaninoff, Serge 
RAISING THE WIND 
Raleigh, Cecil 
RAVENSWOOD 
Reade, Charles 
Red Bull Tavern 
Reece, Robert 

359 




270 



270 



.270, 271 


.. 20 

,270,271 



.270, 271 



.270, 271 



.270, 271 

, , 


323 

, # 


181, 294 

, # 


44, 129 



260 



64 

, , 


280, 282 

, 58, 59, 126 

303, 317 

. , 


9, 162 



76 



127 



281 

, # 


10 

272, 

274, 275, 276 



13 

•• 


44, 276 

;; 


208 

m , 


181, 182 

,, 


101, 102 

• • 


284, 309 



182, 190 

, # 


145 



323 

# , 


304, 305 

146, 

147, 

148, 293 



205 

204, 

207, 208, 209 



317 



101, 165 



171, 335 

# # 


55,136 

• .# 


252 



804 

• 4* 


37 

, # 


323, 329 

9 9 

53 

78, 249 



117 

... 

• 

77 



2a 























INDEX— continued. 


Reinhardt, Maximilian 
R6jane, Gabrielle 
Rendle, Thomas McDonald 
REPARATION 
Reserved Force 
REVENGE, THE 
Reynolds, Sir Joshua 
Richardson’s Booth 
RICHELIEU 

RICHES. 

Righton, Edward 
Rignold, Lionel 
RIP VAN WINKLE .. 
RIVAL QUEENS, THE (also 
RIVALS, THE 
ROAD TO RUIN, THE 
ROBERT MACAIRE .. 
ROBESPIERRE 
Roberts, Arthur .. 
Robertson, Thomas William 
Rockefeller, John D. 

Rodin, Auguste 
Roi d'lvetot, Le 
ROl S'AMUSE, LE 
ROMANCE 

ROMANESQUES, LES 
ROMEO AND JULIET 

-Esm§ Beringer in .. 

-Charlotte Cushman in 

-Franklin Dyall in .. 

-David Garrick in 

-Sir Henry Irving in 

-Charles Kean in 

-Edmund Kean in 

-Doris Keane in 

-W. C. Macready in .. 

-Leon Quartermain in 

-Basil Sidney in 

-William Terries in .. 

-Ellen Terry in 

Rorke, Kate 
Rorke, Mary 
Rosa Troupe 
ROSEM ARY 

Moscovitch) 
Rosmer, Milton 
Rostand, Edmond 


212 


213 


.. 170,245 
65, 102, 103 
310 

243, 245 

244, 315 
109 

30 
254 
322, 323 


212 
79 
276 
76 

EXANDER THE GREAT) 200, 201 

68, 77 
79 

302, 303 
329 
164, 271 
35 

300, 310 
85 
281 
333 
24 
55 

30, 54, 138, 140, 145, 186, 199, 
267, 289, 329 

289 

289 
146 

33 
329 
267 
199, 200 
146 
211 

145 

146 
145 

.145, 146 
81, 160 
81,274, 270 
223 
162, 319 

290 
182 

182, 299 


360 





























INDEX— continued. 


Rowe, Nicholas 
ROYAL DIVORCE, A 
Royalty Theatre 
Royce, Edward 
Rupert, Prince (Prince Robert of Bavaria) 
RUTHERFORD AND SON 
RUY BLAS 
Ryder, John 

Ryland, Cliff (and Sweeney) 


Sadler’s Wells Theatre 
Saint-Amand, M. .. 

St. James’ Theatre 
Saint-Saens, Camille 
Saintsbury, Professor George 
SALLY BISHOP 
Sally in our Alley 
Salvini, Tomasso 
SAMSON ET DALILAI1 
Sardou, Victorien 
Sargent, John Singer 
Saunders’ Circus 
Saunderson, Mrs. 

SCARLET PIMPERNEL, THE 
Schiller, Friedrich von .. 

SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL, THE 
Scott, Clement 
Scott. Sir Walter 
Scribe, Eugene 
SECOND MRS. TANQUERAY, THE 
Sense of Humour 
Shakespeare, Judith 
Shakespeare, Susan 
Shakespeare, William 


269, 271, 272 
.. 302, 303 
8, 145, 301, 303, 304, 320 
171 

.. 260, 261 
319 
254 
129 
171 

8, 318, 329 
85 
254 

.. 105,203 
.. 82, 102 
136 

67, 68 , 77, 82, 144 
26 

.. 271, 299 
318 

.. 3, 7, 24 
6, 91, 99, 165, 195, 336 
205 
205 

1, 2, 12, 14, 23, 24, 30, 31, 32, 39, 
43, 49, 53, 55, 64, 72, 86, 98, 111, 
112, 115, 116, 117, 126, 127, 128, 
129, 130, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 
137, 138, 139, 146, 147, 149, 154, 
157, 158, 159, 167, 171, 190, 194, 
195, 196, 204, 205, 213, 218, 219, 
220, 245, 246, 252, 264, 265, 267, 
269, 290, 295, 300, 301, 325, 326, 
333, 334. 

-as Actor .126, 127 

- a8 Playwright .. 126, 127, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139 

-as Poet .132, 133, 139, 149 

Shakespeare’s Worhnanship .. . . .. .. .. 146, 147 

SHAUGHRAUN, THE.13, 275 


269, 


16 
9, 103 
318 
10 
203 
90 
48 

270, 271 
109 


361 












INDEX— continued, 


Shaw, George Bernard .. .. .. .. 33,58,171,230,317 

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley .. .. .. •• 68 

SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER .68, 77 

SHE WOULD AND SHE WOULDN’T . 208 

Shine, John L. .. .. .. .. .. 270 

Shine, Wilfred E. .. .. . 274 

Shirley, Arthur .. .. .. . • • • • • 254,255 

Shirley, James .. .. .. • • • • _ 105 

Siddons, Henry .. .. .. .. .. • • 15, 16 

Siddons, Sarah. .. .. .. 11, 15, 10, 17 

Sidney, Basil .. .. .. .. .. 140 

SIEGFRIED . 59 

SILENT BATTLE, THE . 10 

SILVER KEY, THE. 160 

SILVER KING, THE. 20, 70, 248 

Sinn Fein .. .. .. .. .. .. •• U0 

Siraudin, M. .. .. .. .. . • • • 330 

Smith, William (“ Gentleman ”) .. .. 68 

Smillie, Robert. 175, 170, 179, 223, 231, 232 

SNOWBALL, THE ._ 33 

Social Reformers .. .. .. .. • • • • 174, 175 

Social Status of the Actor .. .. .. . • • • 8, 191 

Somers, Will .. .. .. .. • • • • • • 127 

Somerset, C. W. .. .. .. .. .. . • • • 308 

SOPHIA 81 

Sothern, Edward Askew .. .. .. .. 80 

Speakman, Walter .. .. .. .. •. . • 25 

Splendeur et Misires des Courlisanes .. .. .. .. 260 

SPORTSMAN, THE .. .. :. 9 

Squire, Tom .. .. . • •. 10 

Standards .. .. .. .. .. .. 26, 29, 287 

STATUE DU COMMANDEUR, LE . 10 

Staveley, William R .70, 82 

Stedman’s Academy .. .. .. .. .. .. 147 

Steele, Sir Richard .. .. .. .. .. 204 

Stevenson, Robert Louis .. .. .. .. .. 114, 115 

Stirling, Antoinette .. .. .. .. .. .. 44 

Stirling, Arthur .. .. .. .. .. 270 

Stirling, Mrs. (Fanny) .. .. .. .. .. .. 70 

STORY OF WATERLOO, A. 250 

STRANGER, THE .9,213 

STRIFE.53, 319 

Stuart, Otho .. .. .. .. 148 

Success .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 98, 177, 287 

SULLIVAN . 35 

Sullivan, Sir Arthur .. .. .. .. .. .. 44, 303 

Sullivan, Charles .. .. .. .. .. .. 274 

SUMURUN ... ... . . 170 


302 














INDEX— continued , 


Sweeney (Horace) and Hyland .. 

SWEEt AND TWENTY 
SWEET LAVENDER 
SWORD OF THE KING, THE 

Talfourd, Thomas Noon 
Talma, Fran£ois-Joseph 
TAMING OF THE SHREW, THE 
Tarleton, Richard. 

Tarride, Abel 
Tate, Nahum 
The Taller 
Taylor, Joseph 
Taylor, Tom 
Tearle, Edmund 
Tearle, Godfrey 
TEMPEST, THE 
Tennyson, Lord Alfred 
Terrlss, Ellaline .. 

Terriss, William .. .. .. 9, 25, 76 

-in Becket 

-in The Harbour Lights 

-in King Henry the Eighth .. 

-in A Marriage of Convenience 

-in Much Ado About Nothing 

-in Romeo and Juliet 

Terry, Edward 
Terry, Ellen .. 80,102,145,146,158, 

328, 335 

-in Becket . 

-in The Belle’s Stratagem .. 

-in Hamlet . 

-in Katharine and Petruchio 

-in King Arthur 

-in Macbeth . 

-in Madame Sans-Gene 

-in Much Ado About Nothing 

-in Romeo and Juliet 

Terry, Fred 
Terry, Marion 
Terry, Phyllis Neilson 
Terry Twins 
Tetrazzini, Louisa 
Thalberg, T. B. 

TM&tre de la Gaiete 
TMdtre Frangais .. 

THERMIDOR 
Thomas, Brandon 


109 
190 
76 
222 

269 

98, 116, 335 
30, 305 
127 
10 
31 
204 
204 
78, 333 
33 
242 

43, 146, 149 
263, 323 
274 

80, 145, 244, 302, 327 

327 
76 

328 
80 

302 
145 

.9, 10, 76 

294, 300, 304, 305, 324, 


328 
80, 304 
294 
306 
328 
324 
102 
300, 301 
145, 146 
70, 82, 302 
8, 163, 244 
69 
233 
256 
81 
330 

55, 68, 266 

10 

9 


363 









































INDEX— continued , 


Thomson, James 



265 

Thorne, Thomas .. 



.. 20, 81 

Thorndike, Russell 



98 

Thorndike, Sybil 



98 

Thoughts and After-Thoughts 



90 

Tidswell, Miss 



.. 254, 258 

TIMES, THE . 



43 

Tinkering .. 

18, 23, 

G2, 03, 00, 75, 104, 201, 221 

Titheradge, Madge 



120 

TITUS ANDRONICUS 



269 

TOBACCONIST, THE .. 



200 

Tolstoy, Leo Nikolaievitch 



245 

Tonson, Jacob 



30 

Trades’ Unionism 


84, 85, 152, 177, 180, 237 

Tree, Ellen (Mrs. Charles Kean) 


c ' 

266 

Tree, Sir Herbert Beerbolnn 

10, 

43, 44, 08, 97, 98, 107, 148, 

Tree, Lady 

100, 181, 

240, 252, 305 

.. 160, 294 

TREE OF KNOWLEDGE, THE 



320 

Trilby 



256 

Trocadero 



.. 102, 163 

TROILUS and CRESSIDA 



269 

Turner, Joseph Mallord William 



317 

Two Macs 



109 

TWO ORPHANS, THE 



243 

TWO ROSES . 



13, 291, 305 

TYPHOON . 



251 

UNCLE DICK’S DARLING .. 



305 

UNION JACK, THE 



10 

UNKNOWN, THE 



13 

unwritten law, the 



251 

URBAIN GRAND1ER 



180 

Valentine, Sidney 



79 

Vanbrugh, Sir John 



204 

Vanderhoff, John 



205 

Vanderhoff, Miss 



205 

VANDERDECKEN 



323 

Vane, Miss (Mrs. Charles Sugden) 



.. 37, 81 

Vaudeville Theatre 

Vaughan, Kate 



9, 79, 80, 190, 305 
10, 69, 70, 77, 78 

VENICE PRESERVED 



16, 37 

Venne, Lottie 



9, 70 

Vere Street Theatre 



203 

Vezin, Hermann 

Vicar of Wakefield , The .. 



68, 103, 327, 333 



327 

VICTORY. 





364 



















INDEX —eontin tied. 


Viegel (Violette) Eva (Mrs. David Garrick) 

35 

Vigny, Alfred de 


55 

VIRGINIUS . 


213 

VOICE FROM THE MINARET, 

THE 

220 

Voltaire, Francis-Marie Arouet de 

136 

Wagner, Richard 


59 

Walkley, Arthur Bingham 


.. 118, 230 

Wallack, James .. 


265 

Wallack, Lester .. 


265 

Wallack’s Theatre 


265 

Waller, Lewis 

69, 80, 82, 98, 

160, 248, 320 

-in King Henry the Fourth, Part I. 


98 

-in King John 


98 

-in A Marriage of Convenience 


80 

-in Monsieur Beaucaire 


82 

-in Othello 


. .248, 249 

-in The Rivals . 


69 

Wallis, Henry 


5, 15 

WARE CASE, THE 


315 

Warner, Charles 

.. 9, 25 

, 32, 76, 79, 81 

Warner, Louis 


275 

Warner, Mrs. 


.. 196, 269 

Waring, Herbert 


.. 144, 145 

Watson, Malcolm 


26 

Webster, Ben 


78 

Webster, John 


136 

Wellington, Duke of 


277 

Well-Made Plays 


318 

Westminster Aquarium 


107, 108, 109 

WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS 


37 

Whitby, Arthur 


.. 144, 308 

WHIP, THE . 


9 

White City . 


90, 108, 214 

WHY DID YOU DIE ? 


43 

WIFE, THE . 


37 

WILD OATS . 


80 

Wilde, Oscar 


.. 8, 253 

Willard, E. S. 


. . 25, 159 

Williams, Harcourt 


80 

Wills, W. G. 


127, 305, 326 

Wilson, Woodrow 


.. 123, 124 

Winter, Jessie 


308 

WINTER’S TALE, A 


31 

WITCH, THE. 


171 

Wood, Mrs. John 


9 

Wright, Edward 


276 

Wrighton .. 


265 


305 


























INDEX— continued , 


Wyatt, Frank 
Wycherley, William 
Wyndham, Sir Charles .. 

-in Captain Drew on Leave 

-in Cyrano de Bergerac 

-in David Garrick 

-in Rosemary . 

-in Wild Oats 

Wyndham’s Theatre 
Wynne, Wish 


. 78 

. 204 

9, 70, 79, 80,146,162,163, 183,191,228 

163 
.162,183 
80,162 
162 
80 
222 
316, 317 


Young, Doctor E. 
YOUTH .. 


199 

9 


Zazel 

Zoffany, Johann 


107, 109 
207 


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